


Castle Rosvar

by alligatorblood



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Castles, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Rose is incredibly emo but make it Hot, Scotland, i realize this is absurd and yet, jessica said bi rights or die, maybe enemies for like a heartbeat, not so much edward-bashing as it is edward-invalidation, past Jess/Edward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28671228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alligatorblood/pseuds/alligatorblood
Summary: After a messy breakup, Jessica flies off to Europe to find herself or something. There, she meets Rosalie, a hot brooding vampire tucked away in a decrepit castle.
Relationships: Rosalie Hale/Jessica Stanley
Comments: 47
Kudos: 59





	1. Hoppípolla

**Author's Note:**

> A melodramatic rom-com, and my excuse to make survival horror game, movie, and book references. For the sake of this, Rosalie is like 800 years old or something, and just about everyone else is human. 
> 
> This is for fun! So turn ur brain off because I know nothing about Scotland OR castles OR the business of tourism! Whee!

Really, just about everything in the world goes wrong when Jessica Stanley tries to pick up her life and fly off to Europe to find herself.

It's a rite of passage, isn't it? To put her heart through a meat grinder of a breakup- a _bad_ one at that- then decide that her life, her apartment, her clothes, her hair, even her _personality_ feels wrong. Of course, what else is an American girl to do in the midst of an identity crisis but go abroad?

The plan is simple, if not a little naive. It involves cafes and epiphanies. Soul-searching at an alarming depth and a return to the states as a new person. It's exactly what Lauren Mallory did right out of high school and look at her now. Her shiny modeling contract and French pastry chef of a boyfriend. She's practically a changed person.

And when she returns, she will purge him from her apartment. A complete reset. She's going to spark joy or whatever. Kill the clutter. She's going to incinerate all trace evidence of Edward Masen if it's the last thing she does.

At least she tells herself this as she sits on top of her suitcase to force the zipper closed.

.

On her way to the airport, someone steals the cab she hails. Twice. But that's not bad luck, that's just Chicago. Naturally, when she closes herself inside the third, the city is hit with a freak electrical storm that delays her flight four and a half hours only for her to get bumped anyway. But Jessica is nothing if not determined.

With her comped strawberry milkshake in hand, she FaceTimes Angela for moral support as she waits for the later flight they stuck her on. The moment she picks up, there's a commotion near security as a man makes a run for it.

"Jess?" Angela says from the phone, forgotten by her side. It's kind of funny really, it looks like the runner's headed right for her.

It's less funny when he collides solidly with her shoulder as he whips past, knocking the drink from her hand. The styrofoam cup bursts on the ground, drenching her shoes in pink ooze.

"You're kidding," she murmurs. She lifts her phone, remembering Angela.

"Jess? Are you alright? What's going on?"

She flips the camera to show off the state of her grey Nikes. "Oh, you know. I'm at O'Hare. Delayed, bumped, covered in soft serve. The usual."

Angela suppresses a laugh. "Don't you just love air travel?"

.

The flight- when she finally manages to board- goes so smooth, she's immediately suspicious when they make their first stop at Heathrow, but it isn't until Inverness at the baggage claim that she realizes she's lost a suitcase. Rather than deal with claims, she decides to cut her losses. One look out the sliding doors at the grey Scottish morning and all she can hope is that her candy-striped pajama pants ended up somewhere nice.

The arrangements she made with the travel agency made it all seem easy. All she had to do was get herself on a plane and everything would just fall into place. A tiny idyllic village at the border of a lake of impossible depth like something out of a movie. She's never heard of anybody running off to Scotland to find themselves, but maybe that's the best part. There's a first time for everything, and who better than Jess Stanley to blaze the trail?

.

The road to Rosvar is a long and winding one. The countryside is green in the way she remembers Forks but on some crazy multiplier. Still, nothing short of breathtaking. She points her phone's camera out the window and makes sure her Instagram story has a lengthy runtime.

The car set up by the agency bumbles along the unkept road pocked with holes and overgrowth cramming the cracks in the pavement. The driver is a bulky guy with a playlist full of Sigur Rós and a lead foot on the gas pedal. He had greeted her at the airport with a strong handshake and a yellow panel van with _Rosvar Transport_ neatly painted by hand along the side in blue.

They stopped seeing buildings about an hour ago. Just like the website promised, it seems like the rest of the world pulled a curtain on this place. And despite the trouble getting here, Jess feels her confidence in the trip returning.

Just as the thought forms, the car dips abruptly as they hit a pothole and she smacks her head against the window. Her phone falls from her hand down into the crack between the seat and the door. When she leans over to reach for it, the engine coughs and the car lurches forward. She hits her head on the dash and curses into the floorboard.

"Huh," the driver says. "That's weird."

"That's _weird_?" she says, sitting up. She rubs the back of her head gingerly and shoves her phone into her pocket for good measure.

"Well, y-"

Smoke starts billowing from beneath the hood as the engine chugs and sputters horribly. The driver pulls off the road and hops out. He throws the hood up and fans away the smoke with his whole arm.

"Everything okay up there?"

"Aye, it's nothing!"

There's a strange popping noise, and suddenly fire erupts from under the hood. Jess stares at it a second too long because at this point, she wouldn't be surprised if an asteroid came out of the sky and finished things off.

When her rational brain clicks back on, she feels the sheer _heat_ of the fire, the promise of death. She screams and throws herself out the passenger door, landing pitifully in some mud. She scrambles to her feet, and with only her small carry-on backpack and her phone, she runs over to where the driver is standing- now, fifty feet away.

The driver wipes the back of his hand across his forehead and puts his hands on his hips as if admiring the flames. Somehow the radio is still absurdly blasting Sigur Rós into the emptiness of the highlands.

"Shit," he says. He glances over at her and smiles at the blatant shock across her face. "Oh, don't worry, lass. The rain'll get it."

Jess yanks the drawstrings of her hoodie to cover her face.

.

The driver- Peter- offers to carry her backpack for her as they walk the remainder of the way along the road's shoulder, but she refuses. It's the twenty-first century after all (she can open her own doors, thank you!), but really, keeping her eyes glued to her last piece of luggage is the only thing giving her any illusion of control at this point.

"I promise ya, it's not all as bad as this," Peter says from ahead of her on the road. He has his hands in his pockets. "I mean, at least it's not rai-"

"Don't!" Jess says. She closes her eyes and braces for the rain to pick up again as if on cue. Thankfully, it doesn't. "Are we getting close?"

"That we are," he says. He points ahead to what just looks like nothing but trees to her, but as they get closer, she can start to see buildings in the distance.

She feels a drop of water on her shoulder and sighs, resigned to her fate. She must have done something to trigger Murphy's Law or, more appropriately, that old proverb that's currently mocking her: _when it rains, it pours._

.

Peter delivers her to the inn as promised, where the innkeeper- a tiny woman with short hair and a commanding presence promptly smacks him over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Did you dump her into Malmore as well? What's the matter with you?"

"Little car trouble is all," he says with his hands up. "We had to walk that last leg. But it was great, right?"

Jess, who has been dazed through their entire interaction merely nods at the recognition of his tone rather than his words. She barely caught a glimpse of the little town in the drear of the downpour. But right now, the lobby is small and warm and that's really all that matters.

"Look at her! She's practically dead!" The innkeeper grabs a set of keys off the hook behind her and turns to Jess. "C'mon, then. Your room's all ready. You'll have to forgive my husband. I've been telling him that old thing's a deathtrap for years."

"Hope you enjoy your stay," Peter calls after them as they head for the stairs.

"Ignore him," the innkeeper mutters.

The stairs lead up into the second-floor hall, lined on each side by three rooms. The innkeeper unlocks the first door on the left and motions her inside. When the light flicks on, the pure shock of _purple_ jolts Jess out of autopilot. The room is small with little furniture aside from the bed and desk pushed into one corner. But from the loose itinerary her travel agent made for her, she won't be spending too much time cooped up in here. She turns and gives the best smile she can manage.

"Thanks so much, it's perfect."

The woman chuckles. "You've certainly had an adventure, haven't you? Jessica, was it? I'm Charlotte. I'm the one to find if you need anything, and if I can't get it, Laurent in the shop across the way can." She glances at the pink backpack over her shoulder. "Goodness, is that all you've brought?"

"Long story."

After Charlotte leaves, Jess peels off her wet clothes and hits the sheets like a rock. Her journey to soul-transmutation can start tomorrow.

.

The next morning (late afternoon, really), Jess makes her way downstairs, feeling a little jet-lagged, but otherwise an ocean better than yesterday. Things could have been worse, sure, but from now on, things are going to change for the better. She can feel it.

"Ah, there you are," Charlotte says, tucking away her paper behind the desk. "Breakfast's over there. Dinner technically, sleepyhead."

Jess crosses the small lobby to the breakfast nook in the corner where a tray of eggs and toast is waiting for her. There's another girl in the room with them. She's young, probably high school age, with curly red hair and a septum piercing. She's lying on the couch against the wall near the front desk with her feet up, listening to music through her headphones.

"Dreich weather we're having, but looks like it's clearing up a little," Charlotte says. She rolls her eyes at the girl and pushes her feet off of the arm of the couch. "Why don't you get that boy of yours and take Jessica around? She's visiting from America, Lord knows why."

The girl pulls one of her earbuds out. She shoots Jess a blistering look. "Why don't you make Da do it?"

"Your father has done enough, believe me."

"Really," Jess tries, "I'll be fine on my own-"

Charlotte barrels on. "You'll take her, and that's that."

.

"Why's it so dead around here?" Jess asks as she follows Victoria out the back through the kitchen. The street is empty and most of the buildings are dark. She expected a sleepy little town, sure, but not comatosed.

"You're kidding right?" Victoria says, slightly incredulous. She climbs up onto the short rock wall that lines the path and walks alongside Jess. She's wearing white Converse with sharpie drawings all over the canvas.

"No?"

"It's the _off-season_."

"Oh…I had no idea."

"Of course not." Victoria hops off the rock wall and lands in front of her. "Come on. It's this way."

Something about the girl's bluntness and impatience reminds her a little of Edward. He wasn't always like that, just sometimes. But within the scope of hindsight, every time he ever snapped at her for lingering too long at a party with friends when he wanted to get home lights up in her mind, every silent Uber ride after. It's not a big deal, really, but it doesn't exactly bring a smile to her face either.

"It's just through here," Victoria says, bringing her back.

She follows the teenager through the back loading area of the small store across the plaza from the inn. There's a shirtless boy with a long blond ponytail stacking cases of water. He has a shark tooth necklace and a clock tattoo on his arm. She knows it's useless to hope this isn't the boyfriend they're looking for, but when Victoria leaps into his arms the faint disappointment truly registers.

She looks away when they kiss, unsure if she's giving _them_ privacy or if she's doing it for herself. Though something tells her she doesn't even exist to them at the moment. Or ever.

"This is Jessie," Victoria says, pulling away from him. The boy gives her an appraising look, almost like he can't tell what the hell she's doing here. "We gotta give her the guided tour."

"It's Jessica, actually," she says, though it probably doesn't matter. Once you're not one anymore, it's the strangest thing being around people this age. They make her twenty-four years feel like twice that, and she's almost certain there's nothing she can do to change that.

"Ah, American. That explains it." When he smiles, there's a weird sparkle in his eye that makes her shift away from his gaze. "I'm James." He picks up his shirt from the seat of the small forklift and pulls it over his head. "Shall we?"

.

"And _this_ is the wishing well where like, ninety cats have drowned," Victoria says with a flourish. It's about the seventeenth stop on the bullshit tour that has consisted mostly of Victoria and James alternating between making out and playfully shoving each other around. They take turns pointing out buildings and feeding Jess stories she's pretty sure they made up on the spot just to mess with her.

From what she's been able to discern herself from the little plaques scattered around, most of the little village burned down about three hundred years ago after the strange disappearance of over a dozen young women. She decides to ask someone over the crest of adolescence for more about it when she gets back to the inn, seeing as her current tour guides are stuck to each other once again.

"You guys really don't have to do this," Jess says, trying to level with them. The sky is darkening from the storm, so chances are, she won't be out much longer anyway. "I can just find my own way around."

"You hear that?" Victoria whispers. "She thinks she can make her own way."

James grins. "I think we should make just one more stop."

"What?" Victoria says, and when James nods toward trees bordering the lake, she smiles wickedly, sweetening it just a little when she looks Jess' way. "Oh please, let us just show you _one_ more thing."

Jess swallows uncomfortably. "Uh, sure."

.

It gets dark so _fast_ , it feels almost evil as she tries to keep up with Victoria and James as they weave through the trees, laughing. It's early evening by the time on her phone, but it looks like the dead of night. The wind picks up and makes it hard to hear their footsteps.

"You guys?"

"This way!" Victoria calls from her left.

"We're almost there," James says from what she _swears_ is behind her.

The sky cracks open into an absolute downpour. Within seconds, her hair is soaked and plastered across her face as she spins around with her phone's flashlight, searching for the kids or at least a sign of the village, but it's just _black_.

She finds a break in the trees and runs for it. Cold lances through her legs as she realizes she's in the water at the edge of the lake. The lights from the village shine dimly on the _entire other side_ of the huge lake. How did she get-

She spins around as lightning flashes overhead, illuminating the awful remains of a fallen castle. The crack of thunder that follows is so loud she can feel it in her chest.

"God, what the _fuck_ ," she says, voice lost in the wind.

She looks up, searching for the moon or a star or _something_ to tell her she's still alive, but it is none of those things that has her sprinting from the water. No celestial body or dead supernova, just the orange light from a window at the top of the tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! So I know this is a pretty rarepair but I'm having fun with it!
> 
> Leave a comment if you feel like it and I'll respond so we're not all completely alone out here!


	2. As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! So I don't really have an update schedule for this, so just expect a new chapter every few days. You can find me on tumblr @rosedenali for more gay twilight content!
> 
> Also, stacked ellipses mean a change in POV, but it should be clear regardless.

The ground is slippery, slogged with mud and thick wild grass. Jess slips a few times as she stumbles through the darkness. The flashlight on her phone barely lights up anything but the rain. She squints through the darkness and the water, just able to make out the outer wall of the castle. With a hand to the old stone, she walks along the wall until she finds the front gate.

The wind bites into her face as she pushes the heavy gate open. It screeches on its hinges, freezing metal burning the skin of her hands. She might just have to give her travel agent four instead of five stars. This definitely wasn't on the itinerary.

Jess looks up, searching for the light in the tower, but it's gone now. It was probably never there in the first place. From what she could make out in the lightning strikes, the place is uninhabitable, half-collapsed and eerie. But the light had looked so real, a beacon in the darkness. Could she have imagined something like that?

Behind her, the gate slams shut.

Jess yelps and breaks into a run toward the entrance. She stumbles up the crumbling steps and throws open one of the huge double doors. She darts inside and shoves the massive door closed against the storm and whatever _else_ is most definitely lurking out there- lake monsters and ghosts and high schoolers.

With her shoulder against the door, she takes a second to catch her breath. Her jacket is soaked through and the t-shirt beneath clings to her like cold fog for the second day in a row. At least she's out of the wind and rain for the moment, but it might actually be _colder_ inside. She turns away from the door and reaches for her phone to get her flashlight, but there's no need.

Spread out before her like a dream, the foyer is cast in soft orange candlelight, barely enough to see by. Straight ahead is a wide staircase that breaks off in two directions and faintly illuminated by a chandelier. The walls are paneled with dark wood and peeling red wallpaper, but it's in way better shape than the outside lets on.

It all feels like a weird dream as Jess walks across the room to a candle on a side table and holds her hands over it. It doesn't occur to her right away that somebody had been around to light it. Her fingers are numb and her teeth chatter beyond her control. It _has_ to be a dream, right? The castle was a ruin, not… _this_.

She pushes her soaked hair out of her eyes and looks up at the wall in front of her, the large portrait in the wavering candlelight. It's of a woman as regal and ominous as the castle around her. Her hair is long and blond and pulled in the wind of the garden she's painted in. Her eyes are dark and cold, and her stare is ruthless. Jess wouldn't be all that surprised if she stepped right out of the frame.

Beside herself, Jess lifts a hand to touch the corner.

" _What_ are you doing here?" a voice demands, immediately behind her.

Jess shrieks and whirls around to find a cloaked figure partially obscured in the shadows of the weak light.

"I-" She stumbles backward into the table, nearly knocking the candlestick to the floor. "I just- I got caught in the rain. I thought this place was empty."

The figure advances on her, and a gloved hand shoots out and grips her firmly above the elbow. She is pulled back toward the double doors she came in through. Through the haze of fear and shadows, Jess can barely make out the woman's face.

"You must leave here," she whispers harshly. "Now."

"But…the rain."

Her eyes flash, and Jess stiffens at their bright gold color. They're nearly _glowing_ in the darkness as the woman yanks the door open. "What do I care? This is my _home_."

She practically shoves Jess back outside and stands in the doorway to make sure she doesn't linger.

Jess takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. This is gonna _suck_. She charges out into the wall of rain, almost numb by now to the cold- thank god. She makes it about halfway to the front gate before she hears something.

"Come back!" the woman shouts over the rain.

She turns back to face her. "You _told_ me to leave!"

"Get back here, _right now!_ "

Jess groans and stomps back up to the front doors, soaked through at this point. She doesn't know how it's possible, but the rain seems twice as heavy as it was before she caught a little shelter inside. "What?" she says a little indignantly.

The woman gives her a pitiful look, though she still looks more angry than anything else. She pushes back the hood of her cloak and slips it from her shoulders. Jess nearly gasps as her hair tumbles free like thread spun from late afternoon sunbeams. It softens her face and evens out the strange gold of her eyes. In fact, if it weren't for her eyes, she could _be_ the woman in the portrait.

She sets the cloak over Jess' shoulders and pulls the hood over her head. "There," she says with finality. She twists Jess by her shoulders and gives her a push back in the direction of the gates. "Now get out of my sight. Do not return."

Jess pulls the cloak around herself, helpless but to inhale the scent of cloves and roses that clings to it as she struggles to keep her footing down the hill. She stops by the gate, unsure of the direction. She got so turned around in the woods with Victoria and James messing with her. The lights of the village she was able to see from the lake have completely disappeared.

Sheepishly, she turns around, startled to find the woman right beside her. She feels her hand wrap around her arm once again, but this time she welcomes it.

Without a single word between them, the woman leads her back down the road at a stiff pace. She gets drenched in seconds but seems somehow unbothered by the rain. Maybe it's a local thing. Back in Forks growing up, Jess really only noticed the weather if she had to swim to school. It's just a little water, Jess reasons. Though there's not really a good explanation as to why she refused Jess' phone flashlight and has led them through thick darkness the whole way.

Finally, after a small eternity, she can make out the glow from the store and the inn. She lets out a relieved breath and reaches up to touch the hand around her arm. "I can make it from he-"

Her back connects solidly with the truck of a tree, knocking the air out of her. The woman bars her arm hard across her stomach to keep her flat against the tree. She can see the faint sweep of a flashlight out of the corner of her eye.

"Jessica!" somebody shouts in the distance. "Jessie!"

"It's okay. It's probably just the people from the inn," Jess whispers, giving the arm pressed tight across her stomach a slight squeeze.

She drops her arm but remains unnervingly close. "Don't tell them where you have been."

"I- alright."

"Trust me." She clears some water from her cheeks with her gloved fingertips- the very first time she has acknowledged the state she's in. Suddenly, she narrows her eyes, and Jess sees her in that bright garden, staring daggers at the portraitist. "Do not return to the castle."

"But-"

"I will not repeat myself."

Jess swallows. "Okay. And thank you. I'm Jess by the way- Jessica, but my friends call me Jess."

The woman sighs, still impossibly elegant despite her soaked hair and general air of annoyance. "Yes, I gathered that."

Jess tries a smile but it only makes the woman look away into the drizzling night. Lightning streaks the sky as she peers around the trunk of the tree, spotting Peter about a hundred feet away. When she looks up again, the woman is gone.

"Peter!" she shouts, still searching the trees for the woman. "I'm here!"

He shines his light in her direction, and as if by some kind of miracle, the darkness lifts, the rain ceases, and the last glow of the twilight peeks timidly through the gaps in the clouds.

"Oh," Peter says, clicking off his flashlight. "There ya are. Where'd you disappear to?"

Jess touches the cloak's drooping bow at her soaked collarbones. She risks a look across the lake at the stone ruin that looks even worse in the faint evening light.

"Nowhere, really."

.

Later in her room at the inn, she stands at the window with a towel around her shoulders, searching for that orange light in the distance and finding none.

…

…

_I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete._

Rosalie paces her library, glinting in the morning sunlight each time she passes through the beam from the grand window. She feels wired, unable to settle herself into a book or the notes of her harp. Her mind, snared as it is, cannot escape a loop that was created and closed in less than a half-hour on the most unremarkable of evenings.

The human. Rose scoffs into the emptiness. Her gall! Tourists! To just walk into any old castle! And to smile at such a creature! To look death in the eye and introduce herself! Unthinkable. Insufferable, helpless, shivering, loud, blue-eyed, soft-

_Jessica!_

Not in her head but out the window, stumbling across the grounds to the entrance in the most offensive pair of pink polka-dotted rubber boots! The wooden sill beneath her hands creaks and splinters in her grip. How _dare_ she?

Rosalie surges out of her library- the cool natural light and still beauty of her perfect and _undisturbed_ solitude- and flies down the stairs like a ghost. She tears the heavy door open to Jessica's hand still poised midair to knock.

"Oh! Hi!" the girl says, brightening instantly. She reaches into the bag at her side and pulls out the cloak she'd tied her into last night. A token from a phantom long past- she expected to have seen the last of it after delivering the human to safety.

Rose takes the garment but hardens her gaze. "I thought I told-"

"I know, I know. _Do not return to the castle!_ " She points her finger almost forcefully at each word as if berating a child. She steps inside, brushing by Rosalie's shoulder as she passes, eyes sweeping the place for the first time in the daylight. "You're very mysterious and scary. Point taken."

"And yet you're here."

"Duh. This place is incredible!" She twirls around on the rug, gifted to Rose by a duke who fell madly in love at the sight of her nearly two centuries ago, never once receiving an ounce of her attention in return. Though he did have the most beautiful longhand- _Damn you, spoilt creature_.

"Is that a candelabra?"

Rose grabs her arm to stop her from sprinting across the room. "Enough!"

"I feel like I'm in like, _Outlander_ or something," the human gushes, "and _you!_ " She glances at the hand around her arm and smiles like this is all so lovely and perfect. Like she isn't tracking dirt over the floor. God, who is she kidding? It's not the dirt at all. Rose presses the back of her hand against her nose in a vain attempt to block out the tangy smell of her blood racing through her veins. She can practically see the thrum of her pulse in her neck, the slightly blue veins singing, pulling her, hazing out the corners of her vision.

"This place should be on the tour! It's so authentic!"

Rose snaps out of her stupor at the notion of _more_ humans invading her home. "Like hell it should!" She leads Jessica to the door for the second and _definitely_ the last time. "Get out!"

She is about to slam the door in her face when the human sniffles. Her sudden change in demeanor is enough to make Rosalie pause. The tears are worse, and suddenly they're streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry!" she says miserably, her face in her hands. "I'm not usually like this. I don't… _barge_ into people's houses- I…" She looks up and Rose can practically see the nerves skittering through her. If she remembered anything of the human experience, she might have been touched. "I'm sorry, it's just that this trip was supposed to…I don't know. _Change_ me? I just broke up with my boyfriend of six years and I thought taking a trip would help, but so far everything's just gone wrong and I thought I would bring you back your cloak thing and you'd be happy and…maybe you'd want to be my friend, but I got a little nervous and I overstepped. I do that sometimes. I'm so sorry. I don't even know your name."

Rose imagines she takes her tea with enough sugar to have started a war a few hundred years ago. Her blue eyes shine with tears, the color of the dawn sky. A single thread of her resolve snaps. Then, of course, the whole thing unravels before her very eyes as she begrudgingly steps back from the door and motions the human back inside.

"My name is Rosalie."

.

Her throat is dry and uncomfortably hot as she places the tray on the small table in the library near the bench where Jessica is huddled. It occurs to her that she should have fed earlier, but how was she to know this human would walk so comfortably back into her life?

"Thank you," Jessica says, taking the proffered teacup, smiling, eyes still a bit red. She wraps her hands around it and draws it close to her as if sapping its heat. She shivers and leans forward, hair falling from her shoulder and exposing her neck.

Rose silently curses and takes a few cautionary steps back. She has walked this earth a near millennia. She can, _for the love of god_ , survive one afternoon with a weepy human whose blood just happens to smell like the last day of her vegetarian diet.

"So," Jessica says, looking around at the now-dim library, "do you live here all alone?"

"Yes."

Jessica looks up, curious. "Isn't that lonely?"

Rose makes the mistake of inhaling. She locks her arms behind her back and digs her fingers into her forearms. She hasn't killed a human in centuries, and she will not waver. Not even an inch.

"It's by design," she says with great restraint, though Jessica doesn't seem to notice.

"See, I could never live alone. At least, I don't think I could. I moved in with Edward right after high school and we did the whole university thing together, and now I-" She presses her lips together. "Well, I guess I'm alone now. It's not so bad. Really."

Her lip trembles. Then she bursts out crying again.

It reminds Rose of the early years of immortality when she wished for nothing more than her soul- her humanity back. Now, however, she does not envy the fragility, nor the weight mortals seem to carry. Every loss an open wound. Nothing more devastating than the progression of time.

"It ended," Rose says firmly. Perhaps a bit too harshly, but her distress is like an unsettling stirring of her blood. The human responds to the coldness in her tone with surprise. Rose moves to the back of the couch as if the barrier could save her. "There must have been a reason, and you're allowing your heart to overlook it."

Jessica nods solemnly and shakes away a little grief. "It's just… _six years_. It feels like forever. I really thought I was going to marry the guy."

Six years only feels like a long time if you weren't conscious at the beginning of it. Like a child. "Everything in life ends at a cliff," Rose says, sharpening her gaze as Jessica tips her head back to meet her eyes. "Do not throw yourself over for a mere _boy_."

The human swallows almost nervously, but not quite. It strikes Rose then that that's exactly what's so odd about her. She's not afraid. Not every human has run for the hills at the sight of her, but none have come so close without trembling.

"You're right," Jessica says. She sips her tea for the first time and doesn't appear to enjoy it. To her credit, she smiles politely. "I came here to forget about him." She shakes her head at herself and flicks her eyes upward. "Though I don't really know what I was trying to accomplish. Maybe I thought I'd grow a new personality on a fishing boat or get really into some local festival. Maybe join the Peace Corps when I got back home." She brings the teacup up to her lips again. "You know, or something."

This is all very American as far as Rose can tell. A misguided trip to the middle of nowhere all the while ending up more lost than when she started. Here she is, in arms-reach of the most dangerous kind of creature in the world, and all she does is tilt her head and smile.

"Okay, enough about me."

"Really? I found it all so dreadfully interesting," Rose murmurs as she returns to her chair in the corner, the length of the room between them once again. Jessica sets her cup aside and stands to wander the far side of the room, the old shelves, her writing desk, the few odd pieces of art picked up from another life. Rose wishes she could throw open the curtains and let the sun in. Candlelight doesn't do it justice, but some things are harder to explain away than others.

Jessica wraps her arms around herself again, and Rosalie realizes far too late that she is cold. It must be freezing in here. Even worse than it is outside.

"You're not Scottish," Jessica says, glancing over her shoulder. Her fingers are resting on the edge of a broken sundial older than the country she hails from.

"I'm from London, originally."

"So what brought you here?"

"The prospect of solitude, for once in my life."

"And now I'm here," Jessica says, amused and glowing with it.

"And now you're here."

…

…

Aside from her blistering advice about Edward- or men in general, Rosalie is quiet in her corner of the room where she leans over one side of her armchair and rests her chin in her gloved palm like a statue in a dress right off the cover of a pulpy gothic romance novel. She looks almost bored, like nothing in the world could ever surprise her.

Jess on the other hand, can't keep a word inside herself. It's a little embarrassing, but she can't really help it. Everything about the other woman seems designed to pull the tides. From the curve of her neck to the smoothness of her voice. Jess is just grateful she hasn't puked up her _entire_ life story within an hour or two of knowing her, just a good deal of the past few months.

"Sorry," Jess says as she walks back to her spot on the couch. "You probably think I'm really self-centered. You can just tell me to shut up at any time, I don't mind."

"If you say so," Rosalie says, turning slightly in her chair. She pulls her gloves off by the middle fingers, and action so minute yet somehow so _elegant_ , Jess finds herself staring. "You don't need to apologize. Never for anything as small as that," she says, catching her eyes. "But there is something I don't understand."

"What?"

"You said you went to college for film."

"Oh, yeah," Jess says, feeling the cold of the room again suddenly. "My degree's in post-production. It wasn't my childhood dream or anything, but it was something I really wanted to do out of high school."

"But you're not?"

"Edward's dad owns this big marketing firm in Chicago, and he was pretty much promised a job out of college. After we graduated, he wanted me to go back home with him, and… I guess I thought it was the right move. I told myself that all I _really_ wanted to do was get out of Forks."

Rosalie listens intently, but Jess can see that she doesn't approve. The slight frown on her face makes Jess feel like she isn't explaining herself well enough, but why should she have to justify her choices? She was in love with Edward, and with him, there was a future someplace else. Besides, if she'd gone off on her own to California like she planned, she'd probably be in some dead-end PA job and constantly wondering if it was the right thing to do. In fact, she kind of resents the stony look on Rosalie's face.

As if reading her mind, Rosalie breaks away from her gaze and pushes her shiny hair over her shoulder. She stiffens slightly for some reason, but when she looks over again her strange eyes are curious. "What is…post-production?"

Jess smiles. It's always a great feeling to gush about something. It's like someone flicking on a light switch in your head. "Oh! It's everything that happens to a movie after they're done shooting. You know when people say _movie magic?_ A lot of that comes from post-production like special effects or sound design."

Rosalie looks lost in the woods. "Special…effects?"

"You're kind of out of touch out here, aren't you?" Jess says, charmed somehow but weirdly okay with it.

"Maybe a little."

"That's alright."

…

…

The human manages to talk herself to sleep after some time. Admittedly, Rose understood very little of the world she was talking so animatedly about. The last time she watched a film herself, the actors didn't speak, let alone fly through the sky or shimmer in color. But passion is so fleeting in a life this long. She finds this influx of modern information refreshing rather than irritating. She might even say _endearing_ if it didn't swirl her thoughts so.

Somewhere in the middle of her speech, Jessica yawned and it was pretty much downhill from there. Now, she's curled up in a ball against the arm of the couch with her arms pulled in through the sleeves of her shirt. Rose sighs and crosses the hall to her own bedroom where she pulls the quilt from the bed. She covers the human, idling for just a moment, caught by the strand of hair across her cheek, immobilized by the blood coursing through her. Absently, she brings a hand up to her throat.

Rose thinks of her lighthearted smile, the tears she shed no more than an hour ago. She forces herself to leave the room and put at least a floor between them. Even that doesn't feel like enough.

.

The storm picks up slightly as the sun begins to set. Jessica looks hesitantly at the door as Rose pulls it open for her. The rain is nothing more than a sprinkle. Even a human could withstand it. Still, it would be a shame to ruin the smooth way her hair falls around her shoulders. And humans are always getting sick from the cold, aren't they?

Rose pulls the cloak from the hook by the door. It does not escape her as she drapes it over the human's shoulders that it bears the combined scents of them both. It makes her throat burn like hell. She shoves the feeling away. "I trust you can find your own way back this time?"

"Yeah." Jessica pulls the cloak around her, smiling just slightly, but the thought of goodbye is apparently a daunting one. Rose feels a tinge of the same, though she chalks it up to decades of self-imposed solitude and not… Well, not anything else, _really_.

But the downward slant of her features is so disappointing. Rose feels some ridiculous urge to tuck her long brown hair into the hood of the cloak and to remind her that boyfriends come in and out of your life like thieves, that _whoever_ this Edward is, he is an unworthy fool.

"I had a good time today," Jessica says, lingering. "Thank you for the tea. And for listening." She looks hopeful, hanging on to whatever Rose is about to say. The deep green of the cloak suits her. She should keep it, but then what reason would she have to come back?

Rose, stunned by her own realization, barely registers the last-ditch huff Jessica lets out into the damp evening, the shred of bravery she clings to.

"Can I come back tomorrow?"

"Oh," Rose says, "I suppose so-"

"Great!" Jessica surges forward and clutches Rose's bare hands. The contact sparks through her like ignited gunpowder. It nearly makes her gasp, but if the human notices her shock, she pays it no mind. "See you tomorrow!"

Rose watches her walk toward the front gate, mind swimming, spinning faster than it had just hours ago when she thought madness was upon her. _I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete._ She watches until the green cloak and bright pink boots disappear around a bend. Her thoughts do not slow for an instant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The girls are interacting! 
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed, it makes my day <3


	3. Rule of Rose

In high school, Jess went through a short Keira Knightley phase, as one does. She liked the romantic lens all her movies put over time periods that no one should have had to live through.

Staring up at the low ceiling of her room at the inn, she can't help but imagine how easily Rosalie would fit into one of those movies that she accidentally carved into her brain as a teenager. She's pretty enough, obviously, and she could probably bring her own dresses judging by the museum pieces she so casually wears around her frigid castle, but something in the way she holds herself just screams long-lost royalty or something lofty like that.

She rolls onto her side and checks her messages. There are a few from Angela and her mother just checking in. Jess sighs and types out something noncommittal to each of them. There's no point in relaying everything that's gone wrong so far. On the bright side, if her trip _really_ turns out for the better, she'll have some great stories when she gets home.

The five texts from Edward are new. She scrolls through them quickly just to get the notification to disappear.

**Jess, can we talk?**

**I'm sorry. I was a jerk, I shouldn't have said those things to you.**

**Can you please call me?**

**Jess?**

**I miss you.**

Twenty-four hours ago, she might have texted him back. Or even called him right away and cried about the hateful meteorological reception she'd received in this country. And _maybe_ if he said all the right things, she would have said _fuck it_ to her soul-searching plans and caught the first flight back to Chicago. But that was yesterday.

Not much has changed, but Rosalie's words have been circling her all night. They even spilled over into her dreams. Everything in life ends at a cliff, and she _won't_ throw away this opportunity she's given herself, this _distance_. She won't forget how he treated her near the end just because he says a few sweet things and reminds her of the good times they had. She's worth more than that. She's always been worth more than that.

Jess tosses her phone aside, feeling almost ten feet tall.

Since most of her clothes are chilling in Tahiti or melted into Peter's van, Charlotte lent her a few of Victoria's old things. The jeans are about six inches too long and the t-shirts all advertise what she can only assume are newer alternative bands, but she can definitely make them work until she can get back to Inverness to get stuff that fits. As for everything else she lost, she's hoping the little store across the plaza can help her replace some of it.

Jess pulls on her pink rain boots and brushes her fingers over the velvety fabric of Rosalie's cloak before slipping it into her backpack and heading downstairs for breakfast.

.

"Where're you off to so early?" Charlotte asks as she clears her dishes.

There's a split-second where the compulsion to tell Charlotte the truth is so strong, she has to dig her fingers into her thighs to keep quiet. With a slight thrill, she remembers the pressure of Rosalie's arm across her stomach the night of the storm when she thought they had been spotted in the darkness. _Don't tell them where you have been. Trust me_.

"I was thinking about checking out that shop across the way. I lost a lot of stuff on the way here and I want to see what I can replace."

"Oh, that's canny. Laurent can get you anything you need. Just tell him I sent you if he scoffs at your accent."

Jess thanks her again for breakfast and the clothes. Charlotte has really been kinder than she could have hoped. Peter too, even if he did barbecue her favorite pair of jeans and her Rites of Spring hoodie.

The front of the little store across the way paints a prettier picture than what she got the other day in the back of James stacking cases of water. It appears to be something of a general store disguised as a gift shop for the better part of the year. If this trip were giving her a better vibe, she might have taken a picture to add to the comprehensive Insta post of her trip.

A little bell jingles on the door as she pushes it open and the man behind the counter looks up to greet her. He's wearing an orange windbreaker with the shop's name printed across the chest. His bright smile turns a bit curious when he doesn't recognize her. "Welcome," he says warmly. "What can I do for you?"

"Hey," she says, looking around for a brief moment before returning to him. "I was wondering if you could help me. Oh, hold on. I have a list." She digs around in her bag for a few awkward seconds and produces a crumpled up list of essentials that went up in smoke.

He takes the paper and smooths out some of the creases on the countertop. "Ah, Peter said you'd probably be along soon enough. Feels awful by the sound of it- picking up a guest in a flaming chariot," he says with an easy grin. He flips back the pages of the clipboard he'd been looking over and slides it aside. "I can get most of this gathered and sent up to your room by this evening if you'd like. We're a little cleaned out from the rush two weeks back, so I'll have to check the backstock for most of it."

It really _would_ be just like the travel agency she found on page three of Google search results to book her vacation two weeks after the season ended.

"Oh, that's perfect. I thought I'd be out most of today anyway since the weather's so nice."

"Better enjoy it while you can. This time of year, there's no telling." He scribbles something down on the front page of his clipboard, and when he looks up again his face is a bit more serious. "Listen, I heard about the other day, and I hope James and Victoria didn't put you through too much. They're good kids," he says. "You know, if you _squint_."

"It wasn't that bad."

It really wasn't. Well, maybe some of it was- the rain, the darkness, the _malice_ , but in the end, it led to her Rosalie, and for that, she almost feels like she should buy them flowers.

"Oh, I doubt that."

"Well…their tour left something to be desired. A lot, actually."

Laurent's eyes light up slightly, and he leans forward on his elbows. "I'd be happy to tell you anything you want to know. I hope you'll forgive my excitement, but it's so rare we get young people here who are actually interested in the history."

"Well, I read some plaques about the girls who went missing. I didn't get the whole story though."

He smiles knowingly. "Neither did anyone else, I'm afraid."

"So they just vanished? No trace?" Old stories about young girls have a habit of skewing toward witchcraft. As if nothing good could come from girls coming together outside of the supervision of men.

"So the story goes."

"And…what's with that old castle," she ventures, trying for casual when she feels anything but.

Laurent frowns slightly. "Old pile of rocks if you ask me. I wouldn't waste my time. It's dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Jess says casually- at least she _hopes_ it comes off that way- as she moves over to the table of souvenir t-shirts.

"Seems like more of it collapses every day, but it's always been a death trap, loose stones or not."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, if you believe the stories," he says, folding his hands together. "Three hundred years ago when those girls disappeared, they never found the bodies, but the village believed the noble family had something to do with it."

Jess pokes her head out from behind the postcard carousel. "Really?"

He nods and continues. "Something had happened to the Rosvars in the years before. Something secret, and because of it, they'd fallen from power suddenly, forfeiting the village to the rule of a nearby clan. The castle was boarded up and thought to be abandoned, but light could be seen from the towers, shadows, figures in the window, you name it. But then the first girl vanished. The others followed. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that someone, _something_ had lured them from their families and locked them away inside."

"But why?"

Laurent chuckles lowly, clearly amused by how Jess had crossed the room during his story and was now right up at the counter with him, hanging on his words. "It's just a story, lass."

"I want to know."

He sighs. "They say the ladies of the tower were immortals. That they kept humans- especially young women- in their thrall to drink from their blood and keep their youth. When the twelfth girl was reported missing, the men of the town charged the castle, torches blazing, knowing that fire is the only thing on Earth that can destroy unholy creatures."

Judging from the plaques scattered through the little town and the state of the castle, it's obvious that it ended badly, but she'd rather hear Laurent say it. He probably has some kickass campfire stories.

"So what happened?"

"It was a massacre, and few lived to tell the tale. The village caught fire, and that's what the books will tell you killed half the town, but the people here hold firm that there was something there. Something evil. The castle is…empty now, but if you ask me, it's got more ghosts than Hell itself. I'd steer clear of it. You won't find anyone from around here poking around there. Not even troublemakers like James and Victoria."

Jess takes in a breath and smiles. "That's kind of intense."

"You won't get that on the guided tour," Laurent says with a slight laugh. "I got a little carried away, but I hope it was memorable. I'd hate to see you leave this place without at least a few memories untainted by fire and melted luggage."

.

It really is a lot to think over. Bloodthirsty immortals and carnage. Jess turns it all over in her mind as she walks the unpaved road to Castle Rosvar as the locals would seem to want to forget. She supposes if Rosalie truly wanted to be alone, what better place than a forcibly forgotten ruin. Still, it's really fucking weird that a woman so young with seemingly everything going for her to live in a place like that. There isn't even _electricity_ as far as Jess can tell.

More than that, she wonders if Rosalie even knows about the stories. She must since she warned her not to tell anyone where she's been spending the past few days. It's all just a little too weird for comfort, but it all falls out of her head anyway the moment she passes through the gate and spots Rosalie walking by the water.

She runs across the bright, squishy grass until it turns to rocky sand, catching Rosalie after a few short seconds. She rubs her eyes when she sees her, hair free in the breeze, plaid wrapped around her shoulders, her profiled face almost glittering in the grey sunlight. Overhead, a puffy, non-threatening cloud drifts over the sun, but Jess is too busy blinking to notice what caused the change.

"Hey," she says, tapping her fitness tracker to get it to shut up. Now is not the time to praise her for running. She shakes her head and looks up at Rosalie who has turned to face her, a curious look on her completely normal, non-sparkly but still totally perfect face. "What are you doing out here?"

Rosalie pulls her long skirt with one hand and steps off the long flat rock she had been standing on. "I suppose I was thinking. I told you about cliffs, but even I don't know about bottomless lakes." She smiles as though she hadn't meant to say that out loud. "How was your morning?"

"It was good, a little heavy on the village ghost story, but…interesting."

"Interesting?"

"Sad, I think. So many people died and for what? Superstition? A bunch of women vilified for their beauty?"

She gives her a searching look but appears to come up empty. "You…certainly have a different way of seeing it."

"I thought _you_ would think the same way with your whole _throw over your man_ speech."

Rosalie laughs, a sound so unexpectedly beautiful, Jess nearly trips over a jagged rock. "That isn't _quite_ what I meant by that, but I suppose you have a point." She looks at her again, that same searching look.

"What?"

"It's just that every time we meet, it seems…I find myself thinking how strange you are."

"Oh," Jess says, warm suddenly for no good reason under her steady golden gaze. "Good-strange, right? Because if it's bad-strange I'll have to throw myself into the lake."

"Good-strange," Rosalie agrees. "At least, I think."

Relieved, Jess picks up her pace to keep up with Rosalie's long stride. Standing beside her, Jess feels disproportionately small. She didn't even feel this way with Edward who was probably much taller than even Rosalie. In another life, she must have ruled over a country or something with that presence of hers. And if she really wanted to, she could probably do it again in this life.

"So what do you do?" Jess asks as they step over a fallen tree.

"What do you mean?"

"All alone here. How do you fill your time?" When Rosalie still looks confused, Jessica links their arms beneath her plaid. "Like your hobbies."

"Oh, mostly I read or sketch. Lately, I've been trying to get back into painting, but it's never come naturally to me. Renata always said my mind works in lines instead of curves."

"Renata?"

Rosalie slows their pace slightly and looks off to the side as if deciding something. "My sister," she says finally. There is a weight on the words that Jess has trouble gauging.

"You've never talked about your family before."

"There isn't much to-" Rosalie says like a reflex before stopping herself. She rests her free hand on Jess' elbow that's linked through her own. "Actually…it's a rather painful topic."

"I'm sorry. I won't bring it up."

Rosalie gives her a grateful smile that's gone far too quickly.

They come up on the rocky edge of the beach and peer out at the still, dark water, smooth as glass. Jess pulls her back from the waterline. "Careful," she warns, remembering the gripping cold of that night she got lost and accidentally ran into the shallows. "It's really cold."

Rosalie smiles like there's a private joke in there somewhere. She bends and picks up a black stone, and in one fluid motion, she pitches it far over the lake. It crashes through the surface, disrupting the serene view with ripples.

"I think that's an apt metaphor, don't you?"

"A metaphor? For what?"

"You, come crashing into my life."

.

Inside, she follows Rosalie to the kitchen, seeing more of the ground floor for the first time. Most of it is just old rooms full of covered furniture, but the few rooms that Rosalie frequents are still intact and maintained, looking as beautiful as they must have hundreds of years ago.

On the wall of the dining room hangs another large painting. There's art all over the place, but this one, in particular, makes Jess stop following after her. It's of five women, all greatly varying in appearance but painted together like a family. In the back, off to the side is a tall blond woman, painted with great focus on her long golden hair and steely gaze. She has her hands resting on the shoulders of a seated woman with light brown hair. Without a doubt, it's the same woman from the painting she saw that first night. The garden and the wind in her hair, the fury in her eyes.

It's _Rosalie_. It has to be.

Jess takes a step closer and studies the other women. They're all beautiful, more than should be able to be discerned through a painting, that's for sure. She reaches out without thinking.

"Do you make it a habit of touching priceless art?" Rosalie says, suddenly beside her.

Jess startles. She could have sworn the woman was in the kitchen a second ago. "Sorry, it's really impressive."

"Yes," Rosalie says fondly. "That it is."

She nods toward the blond woman. "So, is that you?"

Rosalie smiles, amused at that. "Jessica, this portrait is from the fifteenth century."

"Well, you look just like her. You even dress like her, which I've been meaning to ask you about, by the way."

Rosalie holds her arms out with ridiculous grace and does a twirl straight out of a fairytale cartoon. "What, you don't like it?" she says, deep green skirt swishing, hair falling elegantly over one shoulder. "It reminds me of a happier time."

" _1722_ was a happier time?"

"It could have been."

Jess crosses her arms. "Smallpox? Women as property? British occupation literally everywhere? I don't know, _probably_ a bunch of like, wars?"

Rosalie frowns. "Well, it's no good when you put it like that."

…

…

Jessica lights up in her periphery as she carries the tea tray out of the kitchen. The human turns quickly, chirping excitedly about something lost on Rose. She grips the delicate handles of the tray, bending them beyond repair. She has to fight against several layers of instincts to keep from lunging at her.

As soon as the thought crosses her mind, she curses at her own weakness. She'd spent the early morning hours hunting red deer to prepare for her visit, but now it's clear how vain an effort it was. Earlier, she had the advantage of the outside air and a decent breeze. Still, it should not be this difficult to be in her company. Maybe she's been away from humans for too long, but she would certainly remember if the temptation was ever this _great_. Disturbed, she forces herself to find the control that's served her so well for centuries.

"So how long does it take you to light all these candles?" Jessica asks, oblivious to the lethal struggle within her companion. "It would take me like a month to do it one time."

Rose risks a shallow breath, grateful that her thirst doesn't exactly worsen. She looks over her shoulder at the human who is trailing behind her, content to take in the faded artworks of the hallway.

She thinks of that first night when she pressed her against a tree while her human friends combed the forest for her. Her hair was wet under the cloak, and she was shivering like a small earthquake, but something about the way she squeezed her arm back has refused to leave Rose since.

"Do you feel safe here?" she asks.

Jessica doesn't miss a beat. "Yes."

"And…with me?"

Before she can answer, a sudden gust blows through the hall, extinguishing a half dozen candles.

Jessica shivers. "I'll put it this way: If you _weren't_ here, I'd be terrified."

For the past eight centuries, looking at humans has been a matter of seeing them as creatures beyond their blood. Beside her, Jessica is brave and charming in a way that seems to have sneaked up on her. Rose finds that she can see _her_ at first glance, despite her singing blood. Most unexpectedly, she would like to see Jessica better and as often as possible.

…

…

A fire crackles beneath the hearth in Rosalie's library. It's not lost on Jess that the quilt from yesterday is also draped over the back of the couch waiting for her. The silent gesture touches her. It's still deeply freezing within the castle walls, but the fire takes some of the edge off. The warm teacup in her hands helps too, even if it tastes like pond water.

Rosalie starts toward her chair in the corner of the room but pauses indecisively before settling at the other end of the long sofa. Jess smiles to herself and picks up a book from the side table, glancing at Rosalie who merely nods her permission.

"Whoa," she says immediately after opening the front cover. Not a book, but one of her sketchbooks like she mentioned by the water. It's halfway filled with soft charcoal sketches. Mostly the rocks against the lake or the trees. "These are really amazing."

"Thank you," Rosalie says. She doesn't play at modesty, and it suits her.

Closer to the end there are a few faces like the women from the painting downstairs, but each is missing features. There's one without eyes, another noseless. Almost like she couldn't quite remember what they looked like.

"I took your advice," Jess says, looking up from the page.

"I'm glad," Rosalie says loftily. It fades quickly into a slight frown. "And what advice was that?"

"The whole cliff thing stuck with me. My ex texted me, and I didn't give in. I didn't even _want_ to, really."

"And that makes you happy?" Rosalie says curiously.

"Yeah. I mean, more than the alternative. If I texted him back, I could have told him to stop trying, but I probably would have lost it and jumped on a plane and flown back into my old mistake… Sometimes I feel like I don't know _what_ I'll do. Like I don't know myself. But…I don't think I could have taken any more of it."

"It," Rosalie says slowly. Her eyes appear to darken.

Jess shrugs uncomfortably. "It wasn't anything- It was barely…"

"But it was something. He…hurt you?"

She nods once. "Not physically. But…I guess I don't care what people say, it still counts. It's just as real. And I did the right thing."

"Then I'm proud of you," Rosalie says warmly- well, warm for her. "And…I'm glad you're still here."

"Me too."

"How long do you plan to stay in Scotland?"

"I originally thought three weeks. Loosely. That's what was on the itinerary they made for me, but everything on there is closed for the season, so I'm not really sure anymore."

"I'm not sure you're getting the full experience all the way out here."

Jess laughs a little. "Actually, I was thinking about going to the city in a couple days to do some shopping, look around a little," Jess says, closing the front cover of the sketchbook. "And I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

"Oh," Rosalie says. She looks around the room. "I don't know."

"I would really love it if you came with me. We could make a whole day of it, it'll be fun. Besides, it's what regular friends do instead of, you know," she gestures vaguely around them, "traipsing the halls of a castle and reading by candlelight. Not that I don't love all this." She smiles Rosalie's way. It's easier to sway her when she's not on the other side of the room.

She sighs and suppresses a smile when she feels Jess staring. "Oh, alright."

"Perfect!" she says, elated. "Now we just have to figure out how to get there. I wonder if Peter has another car. I'm pretty sure he'd jump at the chance to show me he can drive an hour without explosions under normal circumstances."

"I can drive us."

"I don't think a horse-drawn wagon is the right move here."

Rosalie waves her hand dismissively. "Don't be silly. We'll take my car."

Jess gives her a skeptical look. "You- who rejects modernity in every form- have a car?"

"I don't _reject_ modernity."

"Right," Jess says, leaning forward to blow out a candle.

.

Jess absolutely makes her prove it, which seems to annoy Rosalie the slightest bit. Just enough to have her pulling Jess along by the hand as they wind down the stairs and cut through several rooms to get back to the kitchen. She pushes open a narrow door that Jess hadn't noticed when they were making the tea earlier.

Rosalie reaches along the wall and flicks on a light switch, and the giant room blinks into fluorescent white view. And yeah, there's a car there. There's like _ten_ , all varying shades and models lined up like a showroom. A tool bench is pressed up against the back wall, implying that Rosalie not only collects them but _knows_ how to fix them. The thought is- well, _dizzying_ , honestly, but also kind of absurd. Rosalie, who lives by candlelight and extremely period-accurate dresses, the auto mechanic.

"This literally makes no sense. Why is this the only room with power? They filmed _Fast & Furious_ in here, didn't they? I can't believe this."

Rosalie looks a bit confused, but she rolls her eyes anyway at the way Jess is openly gaping at her. "It's something of a recent hobby, you could say."

"Oh my god," Jess says, staring at her over the hood of something red and expensive and probably _fast_. "You're a car guy."


	4. Guid & Guiid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit longer than normal, so have fun! ok! Who is ready for a cute n fun shopping trip and a little of that promised melodrama?

Three days after they make the plan, Jess wakes to the sound of her phone vibrating loudly on the bedside table. She fumbles around blindly for it and answers without looking.

"Jess? I've been calling you and calling you," Edward says. "Why didn't you pick up?'

She sits up and pulls the phone from her ear to check the time. It's just after four in the morning here, making it around ten at night in Chicago. "What do you want?"

"I need to talk to you."

"What is there to talk about anymore?"

"I just can't believe I had to find out from your goddamn Instagram account that you just up and left the country!"

"Yeah," she says, shoving her hair out of her face to press the heel of her hand to her forehead. "What's it matter to you? We're not together anymore."

"You can't just abandon your life and do whatever you want."

"What life? I didn't have a job in Chicago. All my friends were _your_ friends. I don't need to explain any of this to you."

For a split second, Jess flashes back to Edward's hand squeezing the back of her neck. She took too long getting ready for dinner. They were getting into a cab and he just grabbed her.

"You're being selfish. We can still work this out, I know we can. Jess, it's been six years. I don't want to throw it all away over a fight. Besides, you know my mother's expecting-" He stops himself. "I'm sorry, I just…I miss you a lot. It's empty around here without you."

It's always the same thing. He thinks it was just one fight, not a million and one little things over the years that stacked up so high, she couldn't see anything else. "Edward, it's four in the morning here. I have to be up in a few hours. If you _really_ want to have this conversation, we can talk when I get back to Chicago."

"It can't wait that long."

"Well, that's how it has to be. Don't call me anymore, alright?"

The other end of the line is quiet for a stretched-out moment, but finally he mutters (in a voice she doesn't like at all): "Okay, I won't." and hangs up.

Jess tosses her phone aside and falls back onto her pillows. She tries to push him out of her mind. Instead, she thinks of Rosalie and the day they have planned. It brings an easy smile to her face, and she falls asleep quickly, all thoughts of Edward Masen far from her.

.

After breakfast, Jess takes one step outside the inn and gets caught in Victoria's grip. She allows herself to be pulled around the side of the building out of curiosity mostly. It's been pretty obvious that the girl has been avoiding her ever since her little tour of the wonders.

When they get mostly out of sight from the main street, Victoria releases her and takes a step back. "Where do you go every day?"

Jess holds a hand to the side of her mouth and leans in conspiratorially. "The medieval shoe tree."

"What?"

"The crack in the sidewalk left over from the historic battle against the Loch Ness Monster. Just the usual circuit, you know?"

Victoria sighs indignantly. "Okay look. I'm sorry about that. We were just fucking with you, we didn't mean for you to get lost for so long… But really, what do you do?"

Jess feels like laughing. Just a little. "Why do you care?"

Victoria looks over her shoulder at something and twists her fingers together in front of her. This new demure- _ish_ behavior is such a one-eighty from every other interaction they've had. It's a little unsettling.

She takes a step closer. Her eyes are strangely serious. "There are lots of different kinds of ghosts. Just be careful, alright?"

"Sure," Jess says, thrown a little. Is she… _warning_ her? She starts to walk away, but the lack of explanation stops her. When she turns around, Victoria is gone.

.

Rosalie pulls the door open before she can even knock. A single look at her has Jess walking straight into the doorframe. All these days of princess dresses seem to have made her come to expect them; the flowing skirts and ribbons and delicate embroidery. The last thing Jess was expecting was for Rosalie to answer the door in a simple pair of light jeans and a silky white button-up with the first few undone.

"Oh, are you alright?" Rosalie asks, touching the shoulder she slammed into the wall.

"Yeah, I just…" Jess trails off at their unexpected closeness. Her eyes fall on the silver locket hanging around her neck. "You look really…different."

"Yes, well, I figured I would at least attempt to blend in. I wouldn't want to embarrass you," she says dryly as she scoops her coat from the back of the covered couch.

.

"So, to Inverness then?" Jess asks as the castle slowly disappears behind them. Rosalie had picked possibly the most subdued car in her collection, but in Jess' opinion, it would still stick out on any highway anywhere in the world.

"Actually, if you don't mind, I much prefer Guid. It's a little out of the way, but I think you'll like it. And…I have some friends there. I owe them a visit."

"That works. I just need to get clothes that aren't meant for the village teen supermodel. She's like six feet tall, I'm tripping over myself over here." Jess pinches the fabric of the Slipknot t-shirt and pulls it away from her. "I'm not this cool. I'm tired of pretending."

"You never fooled me for a second," Rosalie says cooly as she adjusts her mirror. She's wearing a pair of long gloves even now. "If it makes you feel any better."

"Yes, so much," Jess says with a smile.

Before long, Rosalie turns onto a paved main road and drops her foot on the gas pedal. Jess doesn't notice how fast they're going until she looks up from her phone and sees the green landscape blurring past. Good thing she doesn't get carsick.

She leans forward and switches on the radio. "What do you even listen to? Gregorian chants?" She presses the first preset button and the drawl of a local news station fills the car. She makes a face. "The weather? How old _are_ you?"

"Older than I look," Rosalie says vaguely. "I don't usually listen to the radio when I drive."

They don't exactly need a radio station to tell them that it's currently raining, it's going to rain all day, and it's probably going to rain at some point tomorrow. Jess pulls out her phone and connects to the Bluetooth. She hits play on her most recent album and an energetic pop song starts.

" _What_ is that?" Rosalie hisses, nearly swerving off the road.

"Um, Carly Rae Jepsen?" She lowers the volume. "Do you want me to change it?" she says, laughing at her extreme reaction.

"No," she says after a moment of contemplation. "Keep it on."

.

Guid turns out to be a pretty good-sized coastal city about two hours north of Rosvar. Well, two hours with Rosalie practically flooring it for no reason other than _who could stop her?_

"So these friends," Jess starts as they walk through the doors of the shopping center. "How long has it been?"

Rosalie looks up, calculating. "Entirely too long. Maggie stayed with me for a while a few years ago, but it's been ages since I've seen Siobhan and Liam." She holds open the inner door for Jess. "I told them sometime around seven. I hope that's okay."

"Oh, I thought-"

"Because I can call them and change the time."

Jess reaches for her hand. "No, seven is good. I don't know why, I just thought you were going to like, drop me someplace while you visited them."

"Would you prefer that?"

"No," she says honestly. "But won't I embarrass you?"

"Probably," Rosalie says with a hint of a smile.

.

One of the first things Jess notices about being in public with Rosalie (besides an inexplicable sense of pride in her chest), is that she makes heads turn _Exorcist_ -style. It shouldn't be surprising, all the eyes on her. Jess has known her for around a week and still hasn't shaken the breathless feeling she gets whenever she sees her. But quickly, she picks up on Rosalie's slight discomfort under the concentrated attention.

Not even unspeakably hot people deserve to be stared at if they don't want it.

"Let's go in here," Jess says, pulling her into the closest store, not even bothering to check what it is.

"Planning to tackle the Cairngorms?" Rosalie teases as Jess realizes they're in one of those outdoorsy stores that make you feel like you should take up kayaking or eating Lärabars.

"I was only trying to-"

"I know," Rosalie says softly.

While they're here, she might as well get a jacket that can survive more than just air. Right now for rainwear, she's working with an old college hoodie and Rosalie's cloak- which works fine but is just a little too ridiculous.

As Jess browses the racks, she notices Rosalie at a nearby counter, leaning forward on her elbows with her hands folded like how they photograph men for _GQ_ when they're wearing fancy watches. It sort of reminds her of when Lauren Mallory went through her short-lived androgynous phase in high school, and for lack of a better word, Jess was _obsessed_ with her.

Jess swallows and looks down at the brightly colored anoraks.

.

"I think I'm going for more of the Kate Hudson athleisure look. I have nowhere to be."

" _Athleisure?_ "

"I'm on _vacation_ ," Jess says, throwing the skirt Rosalie tried to slip into her selections over the fitting room door. "Wait, throw that back, it was cute."

"Will you at least get something decent for tonight?"

"Maybe. If you ask really nicely."

"Please?" she says with such mock-sweetness, it almost passes for sincerity.

Jess pokes her head out the door and shakes her head at the sight of her. Rosalie is somehow making sitting in a rigid dressing room chair look like bored performance art. Even with the pile of Jess' rejects in her lap.

She brings her hair over her shoulders and bounces on her toes a little. "So, what do you think?"

Rosalie looks over. Her golden eyes flash when she sees the dress. It's simple, dark green with a halter neck. Nothing spectacular, just the kind of thing you'd wear to meet the friends of the oddest person you've ever met. But Rosalie's gaze is so strong, Jess finds herself second-guessing her choice.

"Is it too much? I can never tell how casual these kinds of dresses are."

Rosalie deposits the pile of rejected clothes into the empty chair beside her and rises to her feet. Watching her move feels almost like staring directly at the sunrise, like high school on the tailgate of someone's truck after a long night out, that moment of perfect silence and perfect beauty. Jess feels a silly rush of nerves as she comes closer. Rosalie moves aside her hair, stilling as a strained look crosses her face.

"Rosalie?" Jess whispers, turning her head, just inches between them.

Her gold eyes flick down to hers. She seems to shake herself out of whatever had a hold on her. She smiles almost weakly before taking Jess' hand and turning her toward the mirror mounted on the wall.

The image of them together is so foreign to her, it might as well be another one of those old paintings hanging in the castle. Rosalie squeezes her hand. "Beautiful," she murmurs, no trace of her usual prickly humor.

Jess feels herself reddening and after a few seconds, she reluctantly pulls her hand free. The sudden ember in her chest as she shuts the dressing room door behind her is unexpected. But not unwelcome.

.

After another hour or so of looking through the shops, Jess announces their last stop. She has more or less replaced everything she lost and even added a few garments that would come in handy during the winter back in Chicago.

She heaves the clothes over her arm onto the counter and completely misses the cashier's greeting, distracted instead by Rosalie considering a pair of black cashmere gloves. After a moment, she decides against them and returns to Jess' side at the register.

"All through?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"I'll get the car."

Jess waits until she's gone before darting over to the glove rack and adding the pair Rosalie had been looking at to her stack of clothes at the register.

.

The city is a lot bigger than Jess guessed when they first pulled off the route. After they finished shopping, Rosalie suggested they take a walk through the winding streets. She seems familiar with the city's layout and history. Each time they pass a mural or monument, Rosalie offers some context missing from the little plaques.

"So cars, drawing, and the history of Guid," Jess lists out as they walk. For the nth time, she finds herself scurrying ahead to catch up with Rosalie's stride. This time, she links their arms for good measure.

"I'm not sure I take your meaning," Rosalie says, hand drifting to Jess' elbow.

"Your interests. You know, you don't give very much away. I feel like a paleontologist with a pickaxe and one of those fossil brush thingies." She mimes hammering into Rosalie's shoulder. "One big discovery every thirty years!"

"You seem to think I'm more interesting than I am."

"You live by yourself in a partially collapsed castle," Jess says flatly.

"Ah, but that's _eccentric_ , not interesting," Rosalie says. "The truth is, I live _very_ quietly."

"I could be quiet."

A smile flashes across her face. "Somehow I doubt that."

They come up on a marquee spelling out movie titles. One of them lights up vaguely in Jess' head. It takes a moment to fully connect, but when it does, she pulls from Rosalie's arm and points at the poster displayed on the wall.

"A guy I went to school with worked on this."

Rosalie looks over the poster and grimaces. " _Aliens vs. AI?_ "

Jess shrugs. "Yeah, I guess all the humans have been wiped out and all that's left is their technology to fight off an alien invasion. But like, what reason do robots have to fight for Earth? Unless it's some kind of commentary on the human fear of the unknown. Or like, our extreme hubris in thinking anything we create could be impressive enough to save the galaxy or whatever. Either way, Eric did the monster design."

Rosalie glances at the poster again. "You're going to make me watch this, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Thought so."

.

Two hours later, they emerge from the dark with a greater understanding of the logistics behind intergalactic cyber combat, but that's about it. Jess picks a piece of popcorn out of her hair as she gives it a four-star rating on her movie app.

"So, that is your dream? Explosions and alien spaceships?" Rosalie asks.

"Oh, don't pretend like you didn't love every second of it. I saw your face during that last fight scene. You were so into it."

"Maybe I was," she says, squinting her eyes a little as if coming to terms with that. "But I should have been able to read your name at the end."

"Well, maybe one day you will."

…

…

The film was so terrible, Rosalie just knows that of all her sisters, Chelsea would have appreciated it. But she would have disapproved of this trip with Jessica. Of spending this much time with a human in general. They all would have, she's certain.

As they leave the city limits, Jessica talks animatedly about what went into making the action sequences in the film look so seamless. Rose doesn't understand much of it, but she finds the way Jessica talks with her hands amusing, and passion for nearly any subject is inherently beautiful.

"God, it sucks that it was such a crappy movie. Eric should get an Oscar for the creature design. Those aliens were like, insane."

Rose nods and pulls off the main route onto a rarely used side road. Jessica loosens the new colorful scarf around her neck. It serves as a fresh reminder of her blood. Not that she's been able to forget for more than a few seconds. It's pathetic.

"Are you okay?" Jess asks. "Are you nervous about seeing them?"

"No. I just hope they'll behave around you. I'm not exactly known to bring friends."

Jessica grins at that. She grabs Rose's cell phone from the cup holder and clicks through it a bunch of times.

"What are you doing?"

She holds up a peace sign and takes a picture of herself. She deletes it and poses for another. "Putting in my contact. I can't believe you didn't tell me you had a phone."

"It doesn't work in the castle, _and_ you never asked."

"Well, can you blame me? I thought the only way to contact you was by carrier pigeon. Or telepathy." She sets the phone aside. "Thanks for coming with me today. I wasn't sure you'd say yes, but I'm happy you did."

Rose wonders if it will fade; this inability to say no- to even _want_ to say no to her. A film, a cup of tea, a trip to the city. Rose blinks hard as she drives, trying to find the old version of herself who never thought about these things.

"I'm happy I did, too," she says honestly.

.

Siobhan's house is pressed into the hills fifteen minutes from Guid. A small, private cottage, lying alone at the end of the road, encircled by Maggie's sprawling gardens. The greenhouse off to the side is new. As is the pavement beneath her tires.

Rosalie turns off the engine and stares ahead at the house. She lets her hands fall from the steering wheel into her lap. All those years in the castle, she feels vulnerable without it.

"I know you said you aren't nervous, but I kinda feel like I'll have to pry you out of this car myself."

"Siobhan is my oldest friend. But sometimes it feels like she sees right through me. I'm just preparing myself for the worst."

"The worst?"

"Moral and possibly psychological flaying."

Jessica nods in understanding. "Sounds like Thanksgiving in the Stanley house. Total warzone." She reaches for her new coat in the backseat. "Just say the word and I'll save you. I'm great at meeting new people- present company excluded- but I can fake appendicitis better than anyone you've ever met."

A laugh pulls itself from her chest, and from the satisfaction on Jessica's face, she can tell that was her intention all along.

"I mean it. I could faint, even. Why's it so dark all of a sudden… I think I see a light…" She brings the back of her hand to her forehead and goes limp in the passenger seat. She cracks one eye open. "See?"

As they get out of the car, the front door of the house opens and out bounds Maggie, such a gangly thing, all the elbows and knees and wild red hair of her permanent fifteen years of age. She poses as Siobhan and Liam's daughter when it suits her. Decades ago, when Siobhan and Liam traveled to America, they left her in Rose's care for a few weeks. While the child was more than content to terrorize the countryside on her own, she managed to rein in some of that energy to demand enrichment from Rose. She was partial to stories from Rose's human life and card games. It was only later that she found out Maggie's vampiric gift makes it impossible to slip even the smallest of white lies by her.

"Rosie!" Maggie exclaims, charging into a hug with enough force to crack bricks. Her brown contact lenses sizzle in her eyes. She'll have to change them soon. Rose can already see slivers of the muddy orange color that boasts a diet of both humans and animals.

Maggie pulls away suddenly, eyes fixed on Jessica. Though she trusts the girl's control, Rose still tenses and growls lowly in disapproval of her scrutiny. Maggie flashes a grin and hurries back up the steps to the front door. Vintage Maggie. She'd chance anything to get a rise out of Rose.

"Maggie," Rose says to Jessica in explanation. "She has a great love of pushing my buttons."

.

In retrospect, maybe she should have at least mentioned to Jessica that Siobhan towers over six feet tall and takes the attention from every room she enters with an iron grip. But then she would miss out on the spectacle of the human struggling to pick up her jaw from the floor. Payback for the failed alien invasion of an hour ago.

To her credit, she recovers smoothly (for a human) and smiles radiantly with her neck craned upward at the giant pair.

Presented with three new vampires, Rose wouldn't have been surprised if Jessica showed signs of fear. Any human in their right mind would have at least _sensed_ some kind of threat, but once again, Jessica defies expectation. She falls so effortlessly into conversation with Siobhan and Maggie about the gardens, Rose feels something akin to awe.

Even Liam, who usually takes a few hours to break into good humor, seems charmed by her immediately. The moment she mentions film, he seems to light up, delighted to show off his beloved creature feature collection.

All the things Rosalie has come to know and appreciate of her- her honesty, humor, and tendency to ramble her thoughts- shines through here. She's quite capable of a good first impression. It almost makes Rose regret the circumstances under which they met.

Gathered in the living room together, Rose finds herself back in the swing of things. It really is great to see the three of them. She'd nearly forgotten Liam's dry humor and Siobhan's contagious laugh. They both tease Jessica a little for flying across the world only to end up in dead old Rosvar two weeks into the off-season, but she's game. She recounts the disaster of her arrival right up to the moment Rosalie seized her arm in the castle and dragged her back to the village.

Liam lost it around the time the van blew up, but the last part seems to give him a second wind. "And she lives to tell the tale! Rosie, you've gone soft. I remember a time the name Rosvar would bring a grown man to tears." He switches his gaze to Jessica. "Never a fiercer group of women, I'll tell you."

"I kicked her out, didn't I?" Rose shoots back.

"Yeah, and escorted her home like a regular _terror_."

"It was storming!"

"It's always storming."

" _I_ think it worked out fine," Jessica pipes in cheerfully. She leans into Rose's side and stays there. Beautiful as she looks, Rose realizes the dress was a bad idea. By the second, it becomes more difficult to resist burying her face in her warm neck. It occurs to her that this _isn't_ thirst. Not completely, anyway.

Jessica's touch seems to amplify Rose's own feelings. The rekindled affection she feels for this coven paired with the unshakable pull she feels toward the human. But at the same time, a wave of shame moves through her. These people are the only ones left who really know her at all, and she's been ignoring their company for years, stuck in her own sadness, unwilling to leave the castle.

In the armchair across from her, Siobhan catches her gaze and holds it for a moment before nodding toward the kitchen. Rose lifts Jessica's hand from her leg and squeezes it before getting up to follow after her.

"I hope you know what you're doing with her," Siobhan says once they're out of human-earshot.

Rosalie sighs. She supposes she's been expecting this conversation. "I don't."

Siobhan raises an eyebrow. "Then why bring her here?"

"I…wanted to see. Her blood calls to me. It isn't normal. I could feel it the moment she arrived in Rosvar. I can feel her now."

Siobhan gives the air a cursory sniff. "Smells like a regular old human to me… Must be your singer. Lucky you."

 _A blood singer_. Something she's only heard about through old circles. So rare, she wrote it off as a myth. "I can control myself. It might tear me apart to do it, but I couldn't hurt her."

"You care for her, anyone can see that."

"I tried to drive her away, but she's…persistent."

Siobhan chuckles quietly. "Sounds familiar."

Rose chooses to ignore that. "As my oldest friend, I'm asking for your advice."

She presses her lips together. "Look, the way I see it: you've been away for centuries, 'traveling' when we both know you were running from that night. You finally come back to Scotland only to lock yourself away in that ruin of your family," she says almost harshly, but it's the truth. "Then this human girl, barely in your life a week, gets you smiling and laughing and out to see us? That's special. But I can't tell you what's right. Humans muddle things. As you well know."

Rosalie looks out into the living room at Jessica sitting in between Maggie and Liam, trying to talk through her laughter. By now, they all seem like old friends. Rose couldn't be more pleased.

"I just don't understand what you want out of this, Rose," Siobhan says. "Do you mean to turn her?"

"Of course not." The thought sears through her mind, tightening her grip on the countertop. The granite groans in protest. "Chelsea would roll in her grave if she heard you."

"Easy," Siobhan says, amused. "If not that, then what do you want?"

"I just- I want her to be…okay," she says. Then helplessly: "Aren't you friends with humans?"

"Yes, but it only goes so far. We're not infatuated with them."

"I'm not-" Rose sighs again, lost. But Maggie's habit of hissing when she detects a lie pushes her to admit the truth. "She surprises me."

Siobhan hums and leans a hip against the counter. "Of all your sisters, you were the least interested in companionship. I don't blame you, after what you've been through, but I'll admit I wondered over the years- especially after they were gone- if you'd ever drop your guard again."

Something in the conversation in the other room catches her attention. And she turns her head to listen.

"-weirdest person I've ever met, I mean…the castle, the broody exterior, you know?"

Maggie and Liam both nod their heads sagely and shoot Rose secret grins.

"But she's been a good friend," Jessica continues. "I came here with a broken heart, but somehow with her, I've barely thought about him at all."

Liam winks at Rose for a fraction of an instant before smiling at Jessica in real-time. "Oh, you're lucky she hasn't beaten the idea of men out of your head entirely! Maggie here spent a couple of weeks with her a while back, and on _god_ , I thought she was going to kill me when she got home. Patriarchy this, emotional terrorism that. I was scared to turn my back to her!"

Jessica laughs and Rose's heart turns at the sound. "Yeah, I've kind of sensed that she doesn't exactly…empathize with men."

Liam roars with laughter. " _Empathize?_ She'd have me in a cage if only Shibh would let her. And let me tell you something, she's not far off!"

Jessica tries to catch her eyes through the doorway, but Rose pretends to be absorbed in conversation with Siobhan. From the corner of her eye, she just barely glimpses the soft look on her face. She only looks away when Maggie scoots closer to her.

"You'll have to excuse _Dad_. He doesn't get the merit in the joke," Maggie says with a pointed look at Liam. Then lightly: "Rosie's allowed to talk like that. She's been through more than most."

"Enough," Rose mutters, ignoring the confused look on the redhead's face.

.

Jessica grabs her wrists as Rose winds her scarf back around her neck. "I like your friends," she whispers.

"I'm glad."

Maggie rushes into another one of her strong hugs that actually rocks Rose on her feet. "It was great to see you. Please let me come stay with you again soon. They're going through another honeymoon phase lately and it's knocking me sick."

Jessica laughs, but the sound gets cut off when Maggie zooms over to hug her too.

"I hope we'll be seeing more of you now that the ice's broken again, Rosie," Liam says, giving her hand a friendly squeeze goodbye.

"Of course," Rose says. "I'm sorry about…well, the last era or so."

"Think nothing of it," Siobhan says and takes Rose's face in her hands. She bats at her cheek affectionately. "God, you're like a daughter to me. Don't be a stranger, or _else_."

Jessica manages to wiggle out of Maggie's embrace in time to thank Siobhan and Liam for having her.

"Well, if you ever find yourself in Scotland again," Liam says, "we'd love to have you back. Might as well bring Rosie too."

"Oh, forget Rosalie, I'll fly back here just to visit you guys," Jessica says brightly. "Okay, fine," she says, looking up at Rose, "I'd come see you right after."

…

…

With Rosalie at the wheel, distance feels like an afterthought. She requests the same album as the drive over, and Jess is all too happy to oblige. The drive home sails by so quickly, Jess is just the slightest bit disappointed when they pull into the garage at the back of the castle.

Rosalie retrieves her bags from the back and waves Jess away when she tries to help. "No. I'm stronger than you."

"Like how much stronger?"

Rosalie shuts the trunk. "Exponentially."

"Don't let this be the way you come out as a CrossFit trainer."

She situates Jess' bags, letting the handles slide to her elbows. Jess didn't buy much, but still, she's making it look effortless. "If I understood that, would I be offended?"

"I think you'd probably laugh."

"I'll take your word for it. Now come on."

"Where are we going?"

Rosalie is already halfway across the room. Damn those long legs. She looks over her shoulder. "I'm delivering you to the inn, of course."

.

With her new coat, the chilly night air loses a lot of its bite. Beside her, Rosalie is quiet like always, but it's a comfortable, companionable silence. She's probably going over the day in her mind because Jess is doing the same. She can't help it. Seeing Rosalie with her friends seemed to bring out so much more of her. It might have been because there's nowhere to run around people who really know you, but it was nice to see her in such a different light. Seeing her laughing with them was such a beautiful contrast to the reserved way she holds herself in the castle.

Back home, Jess was unhappy long before the breakup. By the time she found it in herself to end things, it had been months and months of quiet misery. But today felt different. She felt included and adored at times, and even something deeper. With a slight blush, she remembers the dressing room. How close they were, the strange intensity of her golden eyes. The way they looked together in the mirror.

And Rosalie with her effortless perfection, so damn beautiful all day long. It's almost embarrassing, really, the insistent urge Jess felt to get closer to her any way she could. It nearly burned her alive at Siobhan's until she finally caved and let herself settle into Rosalie's side. Surprise, surprise. It felt like a perfect match.

Silly of her to think that urge went anywhere. No, it's still here, even now as they're walking in the darkness. If she's honest, _urge_ is the wrong word. It's too impulsive for something that's been building up for a little while now.

She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the thought, but her brain operates on different rules than an Etch-A-Sketch. Instead, she scans her head for something else to focus on.

"Oh! Before I forget," Jess says, reaching into the one bag Rosalie would let her carry. She pulls out the black cashmere gloves and holds them out. "I saw you looking at these."

Rosalie looks on the verge of diving into the whole spiel polite people are prone to. _Oh, I can't accept these. You shouldn't have…_ But she seems to snap out of it when Jess crosses her arms.

"Thank you. You're very thoughtful."

"I _am_ known for my brain, after all," Jess says. She watches as Rosalie pulls off her old gloves in that same delicate way she's seen a handful of times before. "Why do you wear them?"

"It's just what I'm used to," Rosalie says simply. "And I'm told my hands are very cold."

Jess reaches for one of her bare hands, shocked from the ice of it. She holds it between both her own and blows to try to generate some heat. "There. Is that better?"

"Sure," Rosalie says with a soft note of laughter. She brushes the tips of her fingers across Jess' cheek, each point of contact like an icicle. Jess shudders. " _Such cold hands,_ " she says as if mimicking someone she dislikes. " _Unbecoming, frigid, corpse-like._ "

She pulls her hand back, but Jess captures it and links their fingers before she can put her new gloves on. "It's not that bad. Besides, you're really tall and having poor circulation isn't even that rare."

"Poor circulation," Rosalie repeats quietly, smiling like there's yet another private joke in there somewhere.

As the lights of the town begin to shine around the bend of the hill, Jess bumps her shoulder. "Do the people in town know about you?"

"I'm quite sure they do."

"And they ignore you? Completely?"

Rosalie nods. "And I them."

"Why?"

"They are…wary of the castle. It's sort of a local legend."

"But that happened like three hundred years ago."

"Even so."

.

By the time they get to the town limits, only the streetlamps light the night. Jess half-expects Rosalie to hand over her bags and run off just in case anyone is out this late, but she seems caught up, talking easily about the land, the rugged terrain disguised in green.

"You really love it here, don't you?"

"On the contrary. Scotland has taken everything from me. Everything that matters." Her words are sad, but she seems elated in some small way.

"Then why do you stay?"

"I've been everywhere. Home is a collapsed castle…and everything that haunts it."

"That's…a little-"

Rosalie stops suddenly. Her fingers tighten around Jess'. She's looking straight ahead, and when Jess follows her gaze, she sees the inn. And a lanky shadow lingering at the entrance. Her stomach drops a little as she gets closer, Rosalie close by her side.

The shadow bends away from the building and steps beneath a street light that bathes his copper hair and khakis in pale light. She blinks, certain he'll vanish if she wills it hard enough.

_Don't call me anymore, alright?_

_Okay, I won't._

Heat curls in her chest. This is _not_ what she meant. "Edward? What the hell?"

Upon hearing the name, Rosalie stiffens briefly before dropping Jess' hand and all the shopping bags. She advances on him, a look in her eyes that Jess hasn't seen before. "You," she says. The word is a knife, pure wrath ignited out of nowhere. "What do you think you're doing here?"

"What am _I_ doing here? Wh-who are you?" Edward stammers, backing away.

"If you think I'm going to let you hurt her any-"

"Rosalie!" Jess says sharply. She steps between them before Rosalie can rip him in half, something she's most definitely capable of.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Edward demands.

"You stay far away from-"

"Hey!" Jess shouts. Only Rosalie turns to look at her.

"This is between me and my girlfriend!"

"God, shut up, Edward!" Jess yells, exasperated and _sick_ of explaining to him that it's over. "And _you_ ," she says as she turns to Rosalie.

"Me?"

"I just- I can't deal with you both at the same time! Just go. I-I'll see you tomorrow." As soon as she says it, she regrets it. The wounded look on Rosalie's face is like a vice on her heart. "No, wait," she starts, reaching for her.

But she has already vanished into the night.


	5. All Alright

The car from the airport gets to the inn forty-five minutes late with overflowing apologies. Apparently, the driver had never heard of Rosvar and GPS mapping skipped out on the town completely, instead taking him to an empty cow pasture twenty kilometers south.

Thankfully, Peter was still around last night to set Edward up in his own room because honestly, Jess could stand another second of him last night. The fact that he showed up here at all is mind-boggling, but then he had the nerve to have a list of demands. Starting with immediately accompanying him back to the airport and ending with changing the locks back. God. Why did she stay with him for so long?

"Again, I'm so sorry-" the driver goes on as Edward pushes out the glass door of the inn, looking rough in his creased oxford. He eyes her carefully, awkward in the light of day.

"It's okay, really," Jess says to the poor car service guy. She so hopes Edward sees her shoving his overnight bag in the backseat as a gesture of _get the fuck out of here_ and not kindness. And if he doesn't, well, the way she pushes his door closed after him and glares at the blacked-out glass should do the trick.

As the car pulls away, she turns her back to it and exhales sharply. Her anger melts away almost instantly, instead morphing back into the worry that kept her up all night. She can't stop seeing it over and over in her head. The fall of Rosalie's face. How quickly she disappeared. She should have followed her.

Over the tops of the trees of the small forest, she can see one of the remaining towers of the castle. She squares her shoulders and heads for the road.

…

…

The willful unrest within Rosalie has driven her to many extremes in her long life. The bloody and drawn-out vengeance of her wrongful death was only the beginning. A century into her second existence plunged her into a thirty-year depression during the Wars of the Roses in England and the subsequent rage reddened her days for decades.

But _this_ , right this moment- this tiny, minuscule moment- she feels as if she has nothing to draw from. She's never quite felt like _this_. Shame against indignation. Hurt. But why should she be hurt? She was only trying to help her, and that's how Jessica thanks her? To yell and send her away? If that's how it's going to be, then fine.

She passes her mirror as she paces the length of her bedroom, feeling foolish, feeling-

Oh, who is she kidding, her heart is _rotting_ , she can feel it. She was a _monster_ last night. She overstepped and ruined it. The light of morning has shown her the truth. To put so much stock in a friendship, to be so unaware of just how much she leaned on Jessica's bright smile until it disappeared. And it disappeared _because_ of her.

What would her sisters think if they could see her now; locked in her bedroom, haunting the place with internal anguish so potent it's curling the wallpaper? Heidi would never speak to her again. Chelsea would pitch her into the dark water outside without a second thought. Surely, each of them would have had the good sense to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, tell her to _wake up_ , this isn't about her at all. It's about Jessica and that _boy_ and everything she cannot guess that happened since she ran away last night.

Far below, the front door wrenches open, and the human calls for her. Renata would be laughing now if she could see the speed at which Rosalie spins around at the sound of her voice. Perhaps only Corin would show a little empathy, but was it not that softness for humans that took her from the world in the first place?

"Rosalie?" Jessica says, running up the stairs. She sounds out of breath. Loud in the silence. A rock in the still water like always. Rose feels light sparking around the dread. Her voice gets closer, but she takes a wrong turn into the empty library. "Where are you?"

Soon, she will come upon her locked bedroom door. But Rose feels caught, unused to this sort of thing. What is she to say? And how can she keep the seemingly random swirling of her emotions out of her words?

Jessica walks back into the hallway, stopping just outside her door. She must have seen the light from beneath. She knocks twice. "Rosalie? Are you there?"

"Yes."

"I...came to say sorry for last night. I didn't mean to yell at you like that. It's just…he surprised me. But like, I still had a whole speech memorized in case he flew all the way out here to win me back. It's like how everyone has their Oscar speech- I didn't think it would _actually happen,_ " Jessica says, and she can hear the slight smile in her voice. Rose rests her forehead against the plank between them to listen. "Look, thank you for trying to stick up for me, but this was something I had to do myself. Otherwise, he'd never give up. But I shouldn't have yelled at you...And I had a really good time with you yesterday."

When she doesn't say anything, Jessica taps on the door a few times. "Hello? I'm trying to apologize here."

All that rehearsing of her own only for her anger to up and leave her. Only the truth sticks. Simply, she was worried. Putting a name to it makes her squirm a little. "Leave me," Rose says without heat. Just the opposite

"Really?" A slight fall in her voice.

Pathos, sincerity. God. Rose can hear Heidi laughing from the grave. "Of course not, you fool."

Jessica laughs a little. "You're so dramatic, I love you."

"What?"

"I said what I said. Will you open the door?"

"No."

Jessica hums. "I told him to go to hell. I told him my dreams were just as important as his, that he never once asked me what I wanted. He actually said he never thought I was serious about it, that all that _movie stuff_ was just for fun until he got his career set up. Can you believe that? He thought I was relying on him." She sighs. Rose can practically see her leaning against the other side of the door, a palm against the wood. Those ridiculous pink boots. "I've barely known you a week, Rosalie. But…it's kind of like…I feel like it's been longer. I think you've changed me somehow." The last part is so quiet, Rose isn't sure she was meant to hear it.

_Where have I seen you before?_

_**In a dream.** _

_A thousand years ago._

Rosalie rises to her feet and turns the key in the lock. The door swings open with a creak, and Jessica takes one purposeful step inside before practically flinging her arms around her in a clumsy but sincere embrace. Rose finds herself momentarily stunned at the contact, the warmth of her.

"I'm sorry," Jessica says into her shoulder.

"No, I should be the one apologizing," Rose says, coming back to herself. She wraps her arms around Jessica's waist, nearly sighing at the softness of her, the simplicity of the fit. "It wasn't my place to speak to him at all, but the moment I saw him there, I forgot myself. And _worse,_ I made you explain through a door."

Jessica pulls away to smile up at her, apparently finding humor where Rose simply cannot. "Can we just do like a blanket-forgive for the past twelve hours and be done with it forever?"

"Of course," Rose whispers into her hair at the crown of her head. "Anything you want."

"Good," she says, shaking her head in amusement. "Back to 1722?" Jessica asks, a smile in her voice. She traces the cross-lacing over her ribs.

"For the time being."

"I like it better. It's you."

.

Rose avoids a square of sunlight on the floor on her way to the window to pull the heavy curtains in the library shut.

"We should go outside," Jessica says. "The sun's so nice, it almost feels warm."

Usually this time of year she can get away with it because the sunlight is so weak. In the pale, slanted light, her skin merely shimmers if hit just the right way, but today is much too bright. One step outside and it would be over. For a brief but admittedly indulgent moment, Rose entertains the idea of dropping her charade. Preposterous as it is, the compulsion to tell her everything is a strong one. But she could never burden her with the truth.

"You go ahead," Rose says as she reaches for her sketchpad. "I think I'm going to finish a drawing."

"Want company?"

"Sure."

Rose settles at her desk with her charcoals. Behind her, Jessica shrugs out of her coat and goes to look at the bookshelves- a place she often ends up, touching everything. Rose supposes she doesn't mind it so much. Nobody else pays the old volumes any mind.

"What are these?" she asks.

Rose looks over her shoulder and brightens when she sees the collection of reddish leather-bound journals. "Poetry. Composed by my sister, Renata. A bit fatalistic, even for my taste, but brilliant all the same."

"Can I take a look?"

"Of course." She turns back to her drawing and grimaces, wondering why she chose to start it in the first place. It's an alien from the film they watched, a wretched thing. Too many limbs, indistinct features.

Jessica flips a page in the journal. "These are kind of like a punch in the stomach, huh?"

"It was intentional, I'm _sure_."

She moves back to the couch to read some more. The slight variation of her heartbeat tells Rose that she is moved in some way by her sister's words. It's been too difficult for Rose to read the poems herself, but this might be the next best thing.

"I…" Jessica says quietly. "I know I said I wouldn't bring it up, but…Liam told me about your sisters."

The charcoal snaps in her fingers. Rose glares at her hand, frustrated more from the breakage than Jessica's admission. She tosses the charcoal aside and brushes her hands together as she turns in her chair. "He never did know how to keep quiet."

"I don't want to hurt you-"

Rose holds a hand up. "You're not. I suppose I've been cryptic, but avoidance is the most attention you can give something. It hurts worse to say nothing."

"I just- What were they like?"

The sadness that tinges every memory of them culminates potently in her chest right then. If she still had working lungs, they might have been choked for air, but if she has learned anything in her eight centuries, it's that if you love someone, you talk about them.

"The Rosvars," Rose says ruefully. Jessica's eyes are soft and intent on her. It helps. "There were five of us. We weren't related, but we lived together long enough to grow into a family. We took care of each other."

She hardly knows where to begin. They were all so different and so dear to her. A moment of thought brings her to the heart of the coven and the backbone.

"There was Corin, caring to a fault. It broke her heart to see others suffering. She doted on me because I was the youngest. Chelsea was her opposite, severe and cunning. She was the true Rosvar. The rightful Lady of this ruin- we merely took her name. She did what was needed by force or guile. Ruthless at times, but without question, she was the glue that kept us all together as long as we were."

Remembering them out loud is painful on an atomic level. It hurts worse than death, of that she's certain. Without Corin and her gift of contentment, every emotion is like a thousand pinpricks. Equilibrium feels like a distant dream.

Then, through the cracked glass of a mirror, the pretty face that often replaces her own.

"Heidi…well, she was quite similar to me really. But she had this way of getting anything she wanted with only a smile. It was impossible to refuse her. We fought constantly, but she was my best friend."

Rosalie turns to close her sketchbook and rises from her chair, feeling confined in some way. "Then, of course, Renata," she says faintly, gesturing to the journal in Jessica's lap. "She was a brilliant artist and poet, but she was always so secretive and private and so protective of all of us… I haven't felt…" she trails off.

"What is it?"

"It's silly, but I haven't felt safe since she died. I can take care of myself fine, but I never thought to worry while she roamed these halls."

"Oh, if anyone wants to get to you, they'd have to go through me," Jessica says, holding up her fists. Rosalie laughs at the thought of her fighting _anything_ off. "I know I don't look it, but I took like eighteen self-defense classes when I moved to Chicago. They won't even see me coming. I'm like white girl Bruce Lee." She punches the air as if proving her point.

"I'm sure you are."

"Thank you," Jessica says. Her smiles always reach her eyes. "And what about you?"

"Me?"

"Yes. There's the nice one, the leader, the…charmer, the artist," she lists off on her fingers. "So what's Rosalie Rosvar?"

"Well, my name is Rosalie Hale. Rosvar was something of a formality. I don't go by it anymore, though it tends to follow. But to answer your question…I suppose if you _must_ label us, I was the musical one."

"Really? What do you play?"

"Almost anything you could name. Chelsea used to scour the markets during her travels for new instruments for me to master. But the harp was always my favorite. I haven't been able to play much since."

"How…how long ago did it happen?"

"A long time ago. A few lifetimes, it feels like. I'm afraid I haven't been handling it in the best ways."

"Maybe not, but at least you didn't fly across the world to reinvent yourself," Jessica says lightly.

"I did actually. Right after it happened, I spent a long time traveling but it only made me feel worse." Rose tilts her head, caught on something she said before. "Why should you change?"

"What?"

"You said you came to reinvent yourself. And that first day you came back, you said you were hoping this place would change you. Why?"

"Oh, that. I guess…after the breakup, I kind of went into an identity crisis or something. I just couldn't stand myself- my hair, my clothes, my interests, the way I laugh, how I act around other people. I felt _wrong_ somehow. In every way."

"And have you? Changed, I mean."

"Not in the ways I was thinking." Jessica shrugs. "Besides, hanging out with you just reminded me that I'm fucking hot, and honestly, it would be a betrayal to my hot self to change anything about me because of how a man made me feel."

"I would have said boy."

Jessica flashes a smile, luminous in the dim library. Rose feels her chest grow warmer. She looks away, overwhelmed.

…

…

Jess knows something. The problem is, she doesn't know what she knows.

While Rosalie is off tending to something on the underground floors (a place she deemed too dangerous for Jess to follow), Jess stands before the grand Rosvar portrait in the dining room. It catches her eyes as she waits. It's _them_. They're all spelled out for her now, names to perfect faces.

Rosalie with her hands on Corin's shoulders. Renata sulking and partially hidden behind Chelsea's arm, obscured by her own long black hair and her sister's natural draw. And Heidi, lounging on a chair to their right, looking bored. It couldn't be anyone else.

_Jessica, that painting is from the fifteenth century._

How is that possible?

If Jess is honest, Rosalie's face in all these old paintings isn't the only thing that's been bugging her. There are all these pieces that don't sit right like the way Rosalie speaks and acts. The woman barely looks twenty-five, but there's something unmistakably _ancient_ about her. She talks about her sisters' deaths as if they happened at least a few decades ago- decades she doesn't quite have to her. Pair that with her non-reaction to the rain or permanent chill of the castle, the secrecy and distrust of the villagers, and Jess can't help but get a sense that _something_ might be off.

If she reaches further, there was also the strange glow of her skin that day by the water… And how could Chelsea be Lady of a castle that fell _lifetimes_ ago? It's all so strange, yet she doesn't feel like she's being lied to either.

Jess lifts her candle closer to the painting to get a better look, taking care to keep the flame a safe distance away.

"Again with my paintings. I have half a mind to give them to you," Rosalie says from behind her.

She startles, flushing. Rosalie takes a step backward from the candle as Jess turns with it in her hand.

"It's just that you're all so beautiful," Jess says, testing her a little.

She tilts her head as if intrigued by that. Her smile is strangely cognizant. Maybe Rosalie knows something as well. "It's getting late," she says evenly. "You should get back before you lose the sun."

Rosalie offers her arm, and Jess takes it out of habit at this point. They walk together down the long hall toward the entrance where Rosalie helps her into her coat. She pulls Jess' hair loose and arranges it carefully in front of her shoulders. "Thanks for today- up there," she says, pointing in the general direction of the library. "I know it must have been pretty hard to talk about."

"You are…easy to talk to," Rosalie says, tugging gently at a stand of her hair. Jess almost wants to close her eyes at the feeling.

Rosalie looks tentatively up at the sky for a moment before she crosses the threshold. Her hesitation isn't lost on Jess, just like it wasn't earlier when she avoided a walk outside in the warm sunshine. She is a little on the pale side. Her skin is probably sensitive, and Jess can relate. She'd lost her favorite sunscreen somewhere along the way at the beginning of the trip. Not that she would have needed it at any point with the sluggish weather lately.

"So, I'll see you soon?" Jess asks hopefully.

When Rosalie looks up, the gold in her eyes is missing, and it has been all day. It's surprising that Jess didn't pick up on it earlier. "I'll be away tomorrow for likely most of the day."

"Oh-"

"But you can join me for dinner if you like."

"Okay," Jess says. She nods like a bobblehead and wants to throw herself in the lake for it. She can't help it. Sometimes you just meet people that make you feel like a container of pink glitter, and there's nothing you can do about it.

"Does that make you nervous?" Rosalie asks. She seems genuinely curious.

"No. Just excited."

"Anything I should know about, dinner-wise."

"I guess I'm sort of a vegetarian."

Rosalie chuckles. "Me too."

Come to think of it, Jess has never seen her eat at all. Or even take a sip of her tea.

Again with the little puzzle pieces. It's probably nothing, just Jess' brain shorting out from the smell of candle wax and the Faraday cage effect the castle seems to have on her cell phone. She's a little too reliant on the thing, honestly. Rosalie is just…weird. Good-weird. _Perfect_ -weird. Everything else is just…brain fuzz. Or maybe not.

All she really knows is that Renata's poems were dated, and the entries stopped over three hundred years ago.

.

Back in the village under the last rays of sunset, Laurent's story lingers in her mind. Somewhere in her head, she knows this is all ridiculous. Like, _seriously_. But it nags at her all the same.

_They say the ladies of the tower were immortals._

… _to drink from their blood and keep their youth._

Jess fumbles with her room key in the lock. Once she gets inside, she goes straight to the large lake-facing window. In the distance, she can just barely make out the glow of light in the tower.

.

That night she dreams of torn tapestries and flickering firelight, the soft brush of hair across her cheek. She's on the floor in a part of the castle she doesn't recognize wearing a dress she saw in some old movie once. A voice somewhere off in the shadows whispers her name.

In the wavering candlelight, a figure leans over her, face obscured in the dark, a cool hand cradling her face, cloves and roses in the air. "You shouldn't be here," she says in a low voice. The hand vanishes from her face.

"Wait!" Jess shouts, desperate suddenly.

Across the room, Rosalie turns. Her black eyes flash. Fangs grow from her teeth. Jess is immobilized, staring in awe as desire slowly bleeds into the vacancy of fear. She knows she should run. She should tear out of there screaming her head off, but she doesn't. She _can't_.

Instead of fleeing for her life, Jess runs straight for her. Time slows mercilessly, keeping them apart. There are less than ten feet between them, but the air holds her back like thick mud. Urgency tears at her as if the whole world is dissolving around them. She just needs to _touch_ her and she'll be safe forever.

Rosalie, immune to the phenomena, blurs across the distance. In the gap of a heartbeat, her hands are on Jess' waist, pressing her firmly into the stone wall. "I told you. It's not safe."

"I don't care," Jess hears herself say. Rosalie's eyes are so dark, her gaze nearly paralyzing. The air in the room feels thin. Jess feels dizzy, dangled at the edge of some wonderful cliff.

Rosalie's lips barely brush hers before she presses her palm against the bare skin at the small of her back. Jess arches away from the shock of cold. The movement pushes her chest into Rosalie's. Light blinks behind her eyes, her whole body hums with it as Rosalie's fingers slide through her hair.

It's like she's beneath her skin.

Her lips are soft and insistent. Jess feels the prick of her fangs in her lower lip.

Jess tilts her head back as Rosalie kisses down her jaw, a trail of heat glowing across her skin. She pulls away, a question in her eyes. Jess nods, _god yes_. She cries out as Rosalie bites down. Hard. Her vision fuzzes out.

Jess bolts awake, breathing hard, clutching her throat. "Rose," she breathes, frantically sweeping her eyes over the dark room. "Come back."

Shaking away the overlap of fantasy and reality, Jess flops back on her pillows and brings her hand to her lips. Her hair is plastered to her sweaty forehead. She kicks her sheets off, burning out of her skin.

"What the fuck," she mutters just before sleep takes her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went the route of Jess giving Rose the short version of her uh, altercation with Edward because I don't know about you guys, but I've read enough books/fics where men yell at women and I'm Sick of it! so you got an extra Jess/Rose scene, ur welcome.
> 
> also next chapter maybe they have a date! (not-date. yes a date. no. yes <3)
> 
> As always, thank you for your kudos n comments!! Really never expected anyone to even see this story at all, so this is nice!!!


	6. Haunting Ground

The next morning, Jess busies herself with helping Charlotte with the unseen chores that keep the little inn in business. There are only two guests besides herself due to the season, but they still drum up a good bit of mind-numbing work to do. It would be exactly what she needed. If only it worked to take her mind off the dream for more than two seconds.

By noon, she can't exactly fake it anymore. She decides her best course of action is to talk to an expert. Laurent is pretty much all she's got in that department, but she'll take it.

The dream clings to her, right around the edges. Rosalie's black eyes burning straight down her nerve endings, her icy touch, the taste of her lips. She can't shake it, and honestly, she doesn't exactly _want_ to. It was so…

"Are you coming down with something?" Charlotte asks, startling her. "You're red as my daughter's hair."

"Uh. No, I'm fine. Just a little warm I guess."

Having a dream about your devastatingly hot friend is one thing, but fantasizing about her _biting_ you is another. At least it's a first for Jess. Okay, maybe a second. But this is different.

"Take a break, then. I've got this. Besides, Victoria'll be back soon and I can't have you leaving nothing for her to do." Charlotte takes the towel Jess had been folding. "Out you go."

Jess obeys and heads out, psyching herself up as she leaves through the inn's lobby. As kind as he is, there's no real reason to save face with Laurent. She can be the crazy American tourist obsessed with this random Scottish town's legend, and that's okay. They probably see that kind of thing all the time during the summer when the rush comes through.

But it isn't Laurent behind the counter when she pushes open the door to the gift shop, it's James. His long hair is tied back in a bun, and he's looking at something on the computer off to the side. He mutters a vague greeting in her direction without looking up.

"Hey," she says, instantly losing the confidence she stacked up on the way across the street. "Is Laurent here?"

James turns from the computer, looking a little embarrassed. Sort of like Victoria these past few days. "He went home early, maybe a quarter past. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I don't think so," she says with a nervous laugh. "It's kind of _out there_."

"Try me," James says, stepping up to the glass counter. When he smiles, he looks kind. Not like the dude who hazed her for no reason like a week and a half ago. "I think I owe you for the other night anyway."

"It's just…Laurent told me the story, you know the one with the missing girls?"

"That's the only one we've got."

"Right," Jess says. She wishes she could just let go and blurt out her question instead of inching around it, but as it turns out, throwing aside convention is hard. "Well, he mentioned that some of the locals thought the Rosvars were…uh-"

"Vampires," James fills in easily.

"Vampires?" she repeats dumbly. Out loud, the word feels like a slap. Count Dracula, that one Scooby-Doo movie, Matthew Clairmont. The stuff of indulgent horror.

"Yeah, you know: bloodthirsty, super strong and fast, burn in the sunlight, garlic and crosses? All that."

"But she's been out in the daylight," she says mostly to herself.

"Who?"

"Nothing," she says quickly. Definitely too quickly. She's not playing this very well.

He squints his eyes skeptically. "Why so curious?"

"No reason. Just…you don't believe that, do you?"

James crosses his arms. "You're asking me if I believe in vampires?"

"Yeah, you're right. That's weird."

"I don't know." He shrugs indecisively and makes a weighing gesture with his hands. "There's a lot of weird shit out in the world. Who knows?"

…

…

Rosalie wipes the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and steps over the deer's cooling carcass at her feet. The day's hunt had been needlessly drawn out, taking her miles beyond her usual hunting ground. But she should've expected such a result with the way her mind has been turning over and over with hopeful thoughts of this evening.

Distracted as she is, feeding is not something she can afford to take lightly. She has always maintained control around humans, but Jessica's blood is a thousand times more potent than those she passes on the street. Their recent closeness has only exacerbated that.

As she moves away from the fallen creature, its antler catches on the skirt of her dress and tears straight through it. She sighs and pulls it free. Just as well. This frenetic divide of her attention is turning her careless. Maybe it's wrong of her to revel in it, but for the first time in three centuries, she feels _light_. So let the hunt take her halfway across the country, let her dress be torn, let the sun glitter grotesquely on her dirt and blood-flecked skin. None of it matters when she breaks into a run for Rosvar.

.

She hasn't cooked the golden age of the Cistercians. Lucky for her, it happened to be a great passion of an old friend made during her travels. Even luckier that her vampiric memory- barring the more traumatic bits- is still perfectly intact. She is able to follow the motions easily, though she cannot vouch for the taste. At the very least, she knows Jessica will pretend it's edible.

Rose wonders idly how she spends her time in the little village when they are apart. Much of it is closed off from age or otherwise shut up until late next spring. She's mentioned the friends she's made out of the family that runs the inn, and their teenage daughter she can't quite figure out.

If the way she managed to win Siobhan's family over is any indication of her usual manner with people, Rose doesn't doubt that the whole village is in love with her at this point. Either that or running for the hills. The thought brings a slight smile to her face.

Content to let the dish simmer for a little while, she leaves the kitchen, passing her family portrait as she heads upstairs to change.

Perhaps it was a mistake to be so forthcoming about her sisters. If she's honest, she _wanted_ to tell her even more, but the truth is so intrinsically tied to their immortality. She had been vague, but from the way Jessica studied the portrait last night, Rose suspects the truth had made itself known. Part of it, at least.

Rose dispels the thought.

There are worse things.

…

…

Jess takes a step back from the closet and stares down her options. What do you wear to dinner with your (maybe…probably) undead friend? How can you possibly sit still to put on eyeliner for a date-

_Date._

It's not a date. No matter how much the dream makes her think otherwise. _She_ had the dream, not Rosalie. Not both of them. Just her.

Jess shakes herself. She watches herself shake herself in the mirror for good measure, but the attraction is still there, lingering around some mental corner just waiting for her to run smack into it. Rosalie and her articulacy, her curious eye, her understated humor.

Bitterly, she thinks of Edward that night, showing up across the world on a whim, demanding this and that.

_Who was that woman?_

_**My friend. Rosalie.** _

_Did you see the way she flew at me? I thought she was insane. Why are you hanging out with someone like that?_

Someone like that. Someone who _listens_ and admires her interests. Someone she actually misses when they're apart? Someone like that?

_**She's protective.** _

_She barely knows you._

Is it really possible to feel more for someone in a week than in six years with another? With Edward, it was nice at first. The hottest guy at her high school finally giving someone the time of day. It just happened to be Jess, and that made her feel like a rockstar. But that faded when she really started to fall in love with him. It felt real, and for a while, it was. But it was slow-going, like laying pavement or building a pyramid. Somewhere in the middle, it started to cave in, but she did love him once. Truly.

With Rosalie…it's like she fell through a subway grate or something, and the train's coming right for her. Except the train is like, absurdly hot and brilliant and walking around in accurate eighteenth-century British fashion. And Jess is just screaming _hit me_ at the top of her lungs.

She didn't come here for this, but then again, _what_ part of this trip has gone according to plan? Rosalie is a million times better than soul-transmutation, especially since her soul has been fine all along. Nothing like a breakup to make you feel inadequate for no reason. And even if she shoves away this… _crush_ , Rosalie has still been a wonderful friend when she needed one most.

…even _if_ she is immortal. And bloodthirsty. And just really fucking hot.

.

At the gate, Jess stops to look up at the lone tower in the last of the twilight. Her nerves spike, betraying her. She can't even give herself a pep talk and say that it's just Rosalie, but she is never _just_ Rosalie.

She decides it's easier to call it _just dinner_. Dinner with a friend. She straightens her skirt and takes in a deep breath. The front door opens as she collects herself. Rosalie, in yet another one of her gorgeous dresses, leans against the frame and crosses her arms. Jess can't tell from the distance, but she knows there's a smirk on her perfect face.

"I wouldn't want to keep you from the encroaching darkness."

"And the rain," Jess adds cheerfully. She hurries up the path, shielding her hair with her arms. Maybe she had spent an extra half hour on it. Maybe not.

Rosalie closes the heavy door behind her as Jess shrugs off her jacket and shudders from the familiar chill in the air. Up close, her dress is a soft blue color with intricate white embroidery and tiny silk flowers. She hasn't seen this one on her before. But she shouldn't let that make her feel special because since they've known each other, she hasn't seen her in the same thing twice. It's not like she's dressing up for the occasion or anything. It's just dinner with a friend. Maybe Rosalie will actually eat something and prove she's not sleeping in a coffin every night. And Jess can go back to dreaming about normal things.

"You look lovely," Rosalie says as she takes her coat. Jess notices she isn't wearing gloves. "I didn't see you try that on."

"Thanks! I wasn't sure about it," Jess says, looking down at her burgundy wrap dress. On the hanger, it looked all wrong for her, but now it makes her feel like taking Instagram pictures in a botanical garden or something. She does the customary _I'm wearing a dress!_ twirl. "It has pockets. See?"

"I like it," she says. Her smile falters when she notices Jess' boots in all their tacky pink polka-dotted glory. "Why?"

Jess laughs and tosses a grin over her shoulder. "I'm still me, aren't I?"

…

…

"You made this with your _hands_ , and like, a firepit?" Jessica says, gawking at the biryani.

"Yes. It's not complicated. I could show you."

Rose sets a plate in front of herself and fills their wine glasses, not quite blind to the strange look the human gives her as she does so. Jessica takes a bite, and Rose feels a useless flare of nerves. It's all for nothing, though.

"I guess I'll add master chef to the list. I think I could get a paleontology degree at this rate." She pretends to swipe her imaginary fossil brush through the air like that day in Guid.

"It isn't paleontology if the subject is able to voluntarily _give_ you the information."

"Biography, then."

Rose shakes her head. She's quite annoying. But she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy at least _some_ of it. Being unknowingly starved for connection will do that.

Jessica laces her fingers together and rests her chin on top of them, watching her from across the long dining room table. She'd lit the chandelier for the occasion, but all it does is try to drag her into the past at every flicker.

"Well?"

"What?"

"Aren't you going to try it?" Jessica asks.

Rosalie glances down at her plate. It's been a while, but she certainly remembers how to fake eating in front of humans. Chelsea had forced them all into her political schemes at one time or another. She'd found out quite early on that there are few things on this earth as persuasive as a beautiful woman or two. Heidi was always the best choice for that sort of thing- slowly pushing an agenda over a long, dull meal with dull men who were about to have their worlds come crashing down around them.

She scoops up a forkful, wincing at the smell of it. Human food is so off-putting. She takes a dainty bite and chews, all the while fully aware of Jessica's steady blue gaze.

"Happy?" she says after she swallows.

The human sips her wine and nods once, her face oddly neutral.

.

The rest of the meal carries a peculiar tension. Rose can't exactly put a name to it because Jessica is still her usual bright self, talking about her family and America and the time she got lost in some place called Toledo. But there are times when she quiets down as if remembering something while twisting the stem of her wine glass.

During one such moment, the draft grows a will of its own and rushes through the room. It blows out the tall candle on the table in front of Rose.

Jessica shivers and sets her glass down. "This place is haunted."

"I was just a draft."

"No. _That_ was a ghost trying to kill you."

"You're ridiculous," Rose says as she starts to get up to get the matches.

Jessica springs to her feet so quickly, the legs of her chair scrape against the floor in protest. "Let me," she says as she retrieves the little box from the low table beneath the Rosvar family portrait.

Rose eyes her quizzically as she strikes the match against the side of the box and holds the flame in front of her. By instinct, Rose presses further back in her chair as the human comes closer to her. She's not afraid of fire, but she's not entirely open to the idea of combustion either. And _this_ particular human has a tendency to swing candles around with abandon. Like yesterday, when Rose startled her at the painting. She turned with the candlestick lifted like a torch. Rose nearly lost her eyelashes! And it's not the first time.

Jessica touches the flame to the wick and then shakes the match out. She's about to set the matchbox aside when another whoosh of air snuffs the same candle out again.

"I-" she starts, floundering. "You saw that too!"

"Oh, don't gape like that," Rose says, suppressing her smile. "It's only the wind."

.

Perhaps it was foolish to believe this nagging feeling would go away after the plates were cleared. Now, as they stand before the fire in the hearth, Jessica sips her wine, and Rosalie languishes in the undercurrent. She misses the simplicity of drawing with her in the room and talking freely about whatever might happen into one of their heads. Somehow that feels a bit distant tonight.

Earlier, at the door, Rose had called her lovely. In the firelight, she realizes her grave understatement. She longs to make up for it, but how? How, with this strangeness between them?

Jessica's eyes have scarcely left her all night, but this is different from her usual friendly gaze. There's a glimmer of something Rose doesn't quite understand until the wineglass slips from her fingers. Undoubtedly on purpose.

An overhaul of reflex forces Rose to catch the damned thing before it shatters on the old flooring. The boldness of the move almost makes her laugh. So her suspicions were founded after all.

"I'm so-," Jessica starts, blue eyes wide. She swallows when she sees the glass in her hand, perfectly intact. "Oh."

Rosalie leans in, torturing her thirst for this singular moment of closeness. The jump of her heartbeat rivals even the best-placed staccato note. It thrills her like nothing else. "What have you figured out?" she murmurs, words curling.

"A man in the village told me a story," she confesses. "I'm sorry for being weird tonight, I just…had to be sure. I still don't know if I believe it yet."

"Do you want to?"

The orange glow from the fire bends over her face as she thinks about it. "I wish it didn't make so much sense," she says after a moment.

"Does it scare you?"

Jessica gives her a long look. "A little."

"It should."

"You wouldn't hurt me," she says with an awful lot of conviction for one in her situation. There is so little between them that is working to protect her, to differentiate Jessica from the blood that runs through her.

"Are you sure?

"You covered me with a blanket, you gave me your cloak. If you wanted to hurt me, you would have already," Jessica says pointedly.

Rose looks away.

Jessica touches her arm. Her voice comes out in a whisper. "They say you killed half the village for eternal youth."

An old wrath descends on her then. Thicker than blood. Black like soot. " _Typical_ ," she seethes. "Men kill for the power of it and women kill to stay beautiful. Because that's all we care about, isn't it?"

"At least deny it or something," Jessica says emphatically. "I _really_ like spending time with you."

Rose sighs, relinquishing her tirade for the moment. "I like spending time with you too," she says sincerely. "And it isn't true. Well, not in the way they say it is."

"Then tell me the truth. I can handle it." _I can handle you_.

Rose appraises her carefully before going on. "Those girls they sell their village on; they didn't disappear. They drowned themselves in the lake to escape their fathers. When the town came for us, we defended ourselves. Chelsea ordered me away. I didn't kill anyone. I can't say the same for my sisters, but they paid the price in a smoldering heap." The last part comes out more bitter than she intended. She can see it in Jessica's face and the sympathy that distorts her.

Rose touches her cheek, barely a wisp of contact yet it sets her fingertips on fire. "I will never hurt you."

Jessica catches her hand and holds it in both her own. "I know that," she says. Not a trace of doubt. It amuses Rose in a baffling sort of way, the wonder, but the lack of fear unsettles her. It has since the beginning.

When they met, it was easy enough to believe that Jessica was just oblivious to all the little signs that usually scare the hell out of humans. The eerie perfection that goes too far; the eyes, never quite right; the teeth, just a little too sharp. Not to mention those purely instinctual warning sirens in their heads that tend to make quick work of humans in her presence.

But now that Rose knows her quite well, it's clear that Jessica isn't oblivious, she simply doesn't _care_. If that's foolish or admirable, Rosalie will never know.

Jessica hesitates, clear questions within her. It would have been wise of Rose to prepare for this, but as it is, she never actually expected Jessica to learn the truth. Even if she wasn't exactly careful about it. Admittedly, she was a bit reckless a few times. Meeting her by the water in the daylight, allowing her to read Renata's poems that were no doubt filled with the immortal experience. Countless other instances of things she shouldn't have said or done, yet she did them anyway, with a smile.

"If vampires are so powerful…"

"How did they fall to a bunch of humans?" It's something that has puzzled her over the years as well. Roughly, she knows what happened, but it's never seemed a good enough explanation. But then, what could?

"Yeah."

"I believe Corin was already broken over the girls in the lake. You see, some of us have gifts… supernatural enhancements." She glances over to make sure she hasn't lost her. Centuries of vampirism have dulled her to human tolerance for the truth of the world. "Are you with me? I know it's a lot to take in."

Jessica nods and takes her wineglass back, fingers brushing. She throws it back with the grace of a duchess, which Rose finds odd. Then she grabs the bottle from the table and takes a drink straight from it.

When she catches Rose staring, her slight smile is askew. "What? It's not like you can drink it. You've just been pretending." She sets the bottle back on the table, hand still wrapped around the neck. "So. Vampire powers?"

"Yes," Rose says, tracing back to her thread. "Corin's was the ability to make others feel content with their situation, no matter how horrible. For years, she struggled having to see the girls in the village mistreated and abused, but she knew using her power would only be cruel. To force them to be okay with the darkness of their lives. By the time the villagers stormed the castle, she was beside herself with grief for them. She couldn't take any more senseless death."

"So…she surrendered?"

Rose nods gravely. "And they took advantage. They burned her where she knelt. With Corin gone, one might have expected Chelsea to rip them limb from limb, but for the first time in her long life, she was frozen in horror. Chelsea never needed anything of this world- in a way, we were her only mistake. Her gift was for attachments, and she made sure we loved each other too much to survive a night like that. Yet her last words were to order me to the bottom of the lake with the corpses of the girls. Only me, and I'll never know why." She looks out the window at the dark grounds where it all disintegrated into ash. "When I finally came to the surface days later, they were gone. Nearly everything was gone, and there was nothing to hope for. I was alone."

Jessica comes up beside her near the hearth. She rests a hand on the back of Rose's shoulder. Her thumb traces tiny circles over her shoulder blade. Rose drops her head. What a funny kind of comfort.

.

Rose decides it best to walk her home. She had a good bit to drink and it was already dark when she arrived earlier this evening. Jessica shines the light from her cell phone onto the ground in front of them, yet still manages to slip up every now and then. Finally, Rose takes her hand and guides her along the rugged road.

"You're quiet," Rose says, after a while. It's not a complaint. After the tension between them at dinner, any sort of easy companionship between them is most welcome. At least she was able to learn the reason for it, and hopefully it never returns for a moment.

"I thought you liked your silences."

"I do. But I've had plenty."

Jessica swings their linked hands idly. "I just…I think about you alone up there. I guess it's been hundreds of years, and you're used to it. I must be like a blink to you."

"Hardly. I open my eyes and you're still here," Rose says archly before her mood mutates inexplicably. "It…makes me happy. I suppose _you_ make me happy."

Jessica brightens, a star in the thick black night. "I do?"

"I wasn't sure at first. Only because I've lived so long without it. Tough thing that it is to recognize, but yes. You really do."

She lets out a breath that sounds like relief. "You're the only person that makes me feel like there's nothing wrong with me."

"There isn't," Rose says firmly.

"See? I don't get that anywhere else. Everyone back home thinks I'm a breakdown away from…"

"Flying off to Scotland?"

"Well, maybe I checked that box for them."

As the lights of the town become visible to her, Rose notices Jessica slowing their pace. She feels much the same. If she could add another mile, it would be just right.

"I feel like I cheated you," Jessica says. Bizarrely.

"Cheated me?"

"Well yeah. You tell me you're a vampire, and I'm supposed to run screaming out of your castle, and the village doctor treats me for hysteria because I'm babbling nonsense."

"I think…you have seen too many films," Rose says, feeling strangely bewildered by her humor. "Besides, I didn't tell you. You figured it out."

"I'm just saying, it would have been great. The wind in my hair, terror in my eyes! I look over my shoulder one last time at the great Castle Rosvar and scream so loud, the birds rise from the trees, and lightning strikes or something. I'm still working on it in my head."

Rose scoffs. "That would have been awful."

"Awful?"

"Yes, to know that I frightened you so much, you had to run from me?" She looks away from the village lights. "I wouldn't like that at all."

Jessica gives a short laugh at that. "Good thing I'm not scared of you, then."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yeah."

They come up to where the dirt road meets pavement and Rose stops walking, wary as always of this place. It's nothing like it once was, but there are a few family lines that have endured somehow. Humans have a strange tendency to wear their ancestor's faces. A great nightmare of hers is to recognize one of the few that seared into her memory before the cool depths of Malmore took her in.

Their hands pull tight as Jessica keeps going. She sighs. Theatrically. "So this is where you leave me?"

"For now."

Jessica pulls Rose to her by their linked fingers. Rose stays completely still, curious to see what she'll do. The wine on her breath is sweet. Her cheeks are flushed bright with blood. Rose makes a point to be sure she drinks more water next time, but right now she seems happy enough and a touch more affectionate than usual. Rose doesn't really resent that.

"I don't even care that you're a vampire, you're still my friend," Jessica says happily, leaning into a hug. Her words stick together a little bit, but Rose gets the point. "I still have your cloak in my room, you know. You can come get it if you want to."

"You hang onto it," Rose says, not bothering to hide her amusement. In a lapse of restraint, she brushes her wispy brown hair out of her face and kisses her warm forehead. "Goodnight."

Rose turns her in the right direction and waits beneath an old tree until the lights flick on upstairs, the first window on the left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, I can't be trusted to write a slow-burn, so... medium-burn? Whatever! But hey, we're more than halfway through! Thank you guys for sticking with this story :)


	7. Tethered Rendering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to Scotland, castles, and the business of tourism, music is another thing I know next to nothing about! Once again, whee!

So maybe discovering the existence of vampires last week is a form of self-reinvention all by itself. Which means she got what she came for. Go Scotland. But as Jess sorts through flowers with Charlotte in a vacant room at the inn, she feels no rush for the airport, no homesickness, not even the barest desire to return to her dreary apartment.

Jess twirls the stem of a pink carnation and tucks it behind her ear. Her bouquet is looking a little lopsided, but it sure is pink. "What are we doing again?"

Charlotte situates a few dark roses and dusty red ferns in her florist-quality arrangement. It reminds Jess of Rosalie (most things do lately)."The children's orchestra has their Autumn concert tonight. I like to make sure everyone gets flowers. You wouldn't believe the smiles on some of them. It's my girl's last year."

"Victoria?" Jess says. She didn't really peg the girl as a group activity kind of person, but then again, they've barely spoken let alone exchanged interests.

Charlotte nods. "She's been playing violin since she could lift it herself. I couldn't tell you where she got it from. Peter and I are as tone-deaf as they come." She divides her perfect bouquet into a few smaller ones and shows Jess how to wrap them in plastic. "You should come. I know there isn't much in town this time of year, but it's something, you know?"

"Can I bring someone?"

Charlotte doesn't respond right away. Instead, she ties the most perfect golden bow around the stems and holds it up to admire it in the light. She smiles incisively. "I don't see why not." She presses the finished baby bouquet into Jess' hands with a sparkle in her eye that Jess doesn't fully register. "For your help," she says.

.

Jess jogs up the rugged path from the gate with the flowers tucked carefully into her jacket. She'd started off walking, but giving people presents has always excited her too much for her own good. In the past, that's set her up for disappointment a handful of times. Like when she got Edward a kite for his birthday after he mentioned he'd never flown one, and all he gave her was a blank look before he moved on to the large wrapped box his mother had delivered. That stung a little, but that was years ago, and this is _Rosalie_.

She pushes the heavy door open and calls for her from the entryway. A whoosh of cold air lifts her hair from her shoulders as Rosalie suddenly materializes in front of her. Just blinked into existence.

Today she is in midnight blue, a simpler dress than the others. Her long hair is tied up and away from her face that's streaked with a little green paint. Her gloveless hands are similarly smudged.

"Oh," Jess says with a slight frown. "You were busy."

"Not at all, I was just finishing up as I heard you coming," Rosalie says as she ushers her inside. Her bare arms dip in and out of the sunbeam from outside and shine briefly, almost as if covered in tiny prisms.

"Okay, well, these are for you," Jess says, unable to contain it any longer. The sparkling only seared away what little restraint she had left. There's no time for mystery when you have flowers in your jacket!

The small bouquet is only a little bit smothered from the trip, but you would never be able to tell by the joy that blooms across Rosalie's face. She takes the flowers gingerly, fingers crackling the plastic, and brings them to her nose.

"I love roses," she says quietly.

"I had a feeling," Jess says, feeling like a freshly cracked glowstick.

"Thank you."

With the way she's looking at them, you would think no one's ever given her flowers before which is clearly impossible. If Jess were around in 1422 or whenever, she'd be throwing violets at her feet and fainting. She'd start a medieval fan club like Hattie in _Ella Enchanted_.

"What's the occasion?" she asks.

"I just wanted to," Jess says, warmed by her smile alone. "But listen, there's this concert in the village later tonight, and I thought since you're the musical one and all, maybe you'd want to be my date."

"Date?"

"Well, it's a kids orchestra thing. So not a _date_ date, but something like it."

"And it's…in the village."

"Yeah. I know what that means to you, and I just thought…" Jess trails off, losing her confidence little by little. "Maybe if you could just see it for a little while… I guess that's dumb. I didn't really think it through all the way. I'm sorry."

Rosalie shakes her head at the apology. "No, it's alright," she says, holding her gaze deliberately. "I trust you."

Her chest, already warm from Rosalie's reaction to her gift, catches on fire. The blue kind.

Rosalie smiles mischievously, obviously aware of Jess' spike of happiness. Stupid vampire senses. She only found out a few days ago, it's hard to adjust! "I only mean you won't lead me into a trap."

"Well, that's been my plan all along, so…"

"I'm sure the dungeon is still in working order."

Jess sighs. "I'll tell them I met you in Guid or something. They never have to know. Plus, I think you'd like some of the friends I've made. So what do you say?"

"I would be honored," Rosalie says, lifting her chin. She really _must_ have been royalty at some point. She holds her hand out. "Now, come on. As it happens, I have something for you as well."

Jess takes her hand and shrieks as she's swept upstairs in a flurry of cold motion. When the world solidifies around her again, she grips the back of a chair until her senses come back. Rosalie puts a steadying hand on her back and tells her very softly to breathe. It wears off quickly enough. It was kind of exhilarating in a way. Sort of like the drop in a roller coaster. If Jess could move that quickly, no human would ever see her again.

Maybe she isn't taking the whole _vampire_ thing seriously enough. It's not exactly something that comes with coping instructions. The movies tell her what she should be feeling is fear, but that seems a little excessive. The woman draws aliens in her sketchbook and can't figure out how to make tea. Oh, the humanity!

Immortality. Vampirism. Whatever.

The room she's taken her to is one Jess hasn't seen before. It's about the size of the library, but most of the furniture is covered with sheets. If she had to guess the room's purpose, she'd say it's some kind of dressing room from a time when there were more women to dress and servants to dress them. The windows are covered in true Rosalie form. Even with her secret between them, Jess can tell the way her skin glitters unsettles her.

"Is it a dress? Are you enforcing a uniform?"

Rosalie laughs, clear and musical. "There's an idea."

Jess squints through the faintly lit room, just barely making out an easel in the back corner. Rosalie plucks the canvas off of it. "Painting isn't my strength, but…I thought of you," she says as she hands it over.

It's of the village at night from where the road turns to pavement, how they always see it together when Rosalie walks her home. Blue and smudged orange, the half-second before goodbye. A shelf drops in her stomach at the bout of emotion that tunnels through her. She gets caught in the updraft and stretches on her toes to press a soft kiss to Rosalie's cool cheek.

Rosalie's eyes are wide when she pulls away. She touches her cheek where Jess' lips had been.

"Is something wrong?"

"No. I…I wasn't expecting…" she trails off, lost somewhere, hand still at her cheek. Maybe if she had blood of her own, she'd be blushing.

Jess feels her heart jump around a little. The words are out before she can think to check them. "You should be kissed every day or your life," she says, wiping the paint off of her cheek with her thumb. Her skin is smooth. It feels so right to touch her. "Every hour even. Look at you."

"What, just because I'm beautiful?" Her tone borders on tired cynicism.

"No, because you're covered in paint," Jess says, gesturing to her neck and arms. "And because you made this. For me."

"I… You're welcome."

"This really is amazing! No one's ever painted me a picture before. I don't know how to thank you." She reaches for the lone, tall candle on the table behind to easel to get a better look at the painting. Rosalie swipes it from her fingertips before she can bring the flame closer. "Hey!"

"You make me nervous."

"Rosalie, you have candles _everywhere_."

"Yes, but you're unpredictable. And I'm flammable."

.

A few hours later, Jess loops her rainbow scarf around her neck and fixes her hair one last time in the mirror before heading out into the brisk cold. It's been a little over three weeks since she arrived in Rosvar and the shift in temperature happened without her notice. Now it's clinging to her as she shoves her hands into her pockets.

They agreed to meet near the edge of town at the line of pavement that Rosalie hasn't crossed since Edward showed up. It's funny how distant that night feels after she sent her away. Her argument with Edward is a blur. She can't remember everything she said, just the set of his jaw when he stormed out of her room when it was clear there was nothing left for him. That night she couldn't sleep at all. But it wasn't Edward's harsh words that kept her up, it was the thought of losing Rosalie.

Jess steps off the pavement onto the rugged dirt road and scans the trees along the side of the road for her. She almost makes a full circle when Rosalie appears by her side, looking effortlessly preppy in her cream sweater and high-waisted jeans. Not to mention the plaid blazer over her arm.

"God, you look like a J. Crew model."

"Is that good?"

"A little _too_ good."

"I won't pass for human then?"

"No, you'll be fine. Here." Jess pulls her cable-knit sweater from where she had it tucked perfectly into the front of her jeans and ruffles her soft hair a little to shake a little excess perfection out of it. The end result just has her looking ten times better than before. Of course. Jess resists the urge to jump into her arms and bury her face in her silky hair. Just knowing that the vampire would easily be able to catch her and support her weight makes her want to try it even more.

"Are you through?" Rosalie asks, clearly amused by Jess' unfocused eyes and the way her hands haven't left her hair yet. She takes a look at herself. "Well, since you ruined my outfit I'm going to have to insist you take those fashion atrocities off."

Jess twists on her feet intentionally making her pink boots squeak. They clash obnoxiously with every single outfit she bought on their shopping trip, but the fact that they survived the multiple assassinations of her luggage has made her sentimental. That, and she likes that Rosalie hates them. Small pleasures.

"Please?" Rosalie holds out her hand for the second time today. She's wearing the black gloves Jess got for her. It makes her smile a little.

"Fine," Jess says, linking their fingers. Together they take the first step onto the pavement. "Only because it's you."

.

Jess sips on a dry cider, ears still ringing from the musical stylings of the Rosvar Youth Orchestra. What they lacked in membership, they made up for in volume and excited waves directed at their parents. She doesn't know too much about music, but there was a certain squeaky quality to it. They were all so cute in their matching orange sweaters though, so she'll have to let it slide.

She was pleased to feel Rosalie relax beside her inside the auditorium once the music started. She's a bit tense now that they're surrounded by half the town, but it's clear she knows how to be around strangers.

They're in the cramped lobby of the small auditorium, mingling over refreshments and congratulating the kids as they zip for the cookies. One kid takes a whole stack and hisses like a cat when he sees Jess looking. Rosalie laughs until a toddler trips and spills red punch on her jeans.

"So what did you think?" Jess asks her as she dabs uselessly with napkins. "Was it good?"

Rosalie looks up, thinking it over. "Parts of it. The older violinist was practically acting as concertmaster already."

"That good?"

"Better. The conductor seemed…disinterested or at least, inept. I believe the rest of the children learned to follow her instead."

Jess smiles. "She's the one, that first night. And her boyfriend. Over there." She points over to the opposite corner of the room where James and Victoria are in an animated conversation with a few of the other kids' parents.

Rosalie looks them over; their permanently crooked grins, sparking eyes and matching silver necklaces. "Oh, Jessica." She hides her smile. "You are foolish."

"Oh, whatever! It got me to you, didn't it?"

"I'm sure you would have found some other excuse to find me," she says. "Otherwise I might have."

The weight of the last part confuses Jess. The sincerity was too deliberate. "What do you me-"

"You made it!" Charlotte calls as she comes out of the auditorium with the last round-up of stragglers. Her arms are full of the tiny bouquets they made earlier. Jess helps her out by taking most of them before they fall to the floor. "Pretty good, right? Is this-"

"Oh, right," Jess says. "Charlotte this is-"

"About time you came down," Charlotte chides, looking at Rosalie.

"I'm sorry?" Jess says.

"Well, you're _her_ , aren't you?"

"Yes," Rosalie says.

"Good lord. I never thought… You're a bit younger than I would've guessed. You must have been just a teenager last I saw you." Charlotte looks around the room. "Let me go find Peter. He'd love to meet you."

She hurries off to find her husband leaving Jess with arms full of flowers. Rosalie helps her get them down onto a table and picks a leaf off her jacket and twists it between her fingers, looking around at the press of people. Jess stares at her, waiting for anything really.

After a solid minute, she says, "Would you like me to explain?"

Jess breathes a laugh. "Yeah. That'd be cool."

"Eight years ago, there was a collapse at the castle. Just a part of one of the towers that had been crumbling for years. The sound drew the villagers. I told you that they know I'm there. I suppose they came to see the damage- or check on me. A few of them at least. Charlotte was among them. We saw each other briefly."

"That was nice of them. I guess not everyone believes the stories, right?"

Rosalie presses her lips together. Something in her face tells Jess that maybe she wishes they did.

"Do you want me to go make sure she doesn't tell the whole town?"

She nods. "If you would."

Jess reaches an arm around her and gives her a reassuring squeeze. "Don't worry about it. I've got you."

.

Later as they're leaving, Rosalie stops mid-sentence on the sidewalk and looks up, listening. She frowns and looks over her shoulder. Jess is about to ask her about it when Victoria steps out from the side of the building. Her eyes are a little red and James is nowhere in sight. Jess suspects the two are related and feels her _nice_ card getting activated.

"Are you okay?" Jess asks.

Victoria startles, apparently just now seeing them beneath the same streetlight. She nods vigorously for a moment before giving up and wiping her eyes. She sits down on a stone bench and buries her face in her hands. "I'm fine."

"You sure?" Jess sits down beside her like the obnoxious older sister she never got to be.

Victoria huffs a sigh that turns into a cheerless laugh. "He wants to see other people. In _Rosvar_. Who else is there? My _cousin?_ " She runs a hand through her bright hair. "And on the night of my concert. He's such an asshole."

Rosalie's eyes flash, but Jess holds her hand up to call her off. She's all for Rosalie's particular brand of radicalization, but Victoria's heart is just a little too bruised right now.

Jess bumps her shoulder with her own. "He'll be back tomorrow morning if he has half a brain. Then he'll have to make it up to you."

"But what if he's not?"

"Then you ask yourself if you really want to be with a guy who dumps a girl on the night of her big holiday concert. Outside. In the freezing cold."

"God," the girl says, crossing her arms around herself against the chill. It's pretty bare-bones advice, but sometimes all that really matters is that someone's there to give it.

"You played beautifully," Rosalie adds with a smile.

"Thanks," Victoria mutters. She wipes her eyes again. "Thank you for coming."

.

Rosalie accompanies her across the small plaza back to the inn. It's a laughably short walk. Jess can't help but feel a little deprived of the comfortable routine they've developed over the past few weeks.

The change of pace was nice, and she can't deny that it felt nice to be out with Rosalie. She cherishes the time they spend together in the castle, but getting to see her hand out flowers to the kids and smile at the faces she's come to know in the town made her heart feel warm. Being there for Victoria didn't hurt either.

Near the entrance to the lobby, Jess stops to dig her key out of her pocket. Beside her, Rosalie has her blazer on now, looking academic, like she's about to teach Jess something. Something beyond the existence of vampires, her speed and strength, the way her skin glimmers, and her _vegetarian_ diet.

"Everyone liked you, you know."

"No," she says plainly. "They tried. Humans always try at first, but their instincts get the better of them eventually. I'm beautiful but not quite _right_. I made them uneasy. They were willing to look past it because they like _you_ so much."

"The kids liked you. They spilled half the dessert table on you," Jess says, pointing at the crumbs on her sleeve. "And uneasy? I don't feel that way."

"Yes well, I've said it before," Rosalie says. "You're _strange_."

"You just hate that I don't think you're scary. Like, at all," Jess teases. Realistically, it's like hovering her foot over a bear trap, but she just can't seem to remember what danger feels like these days. And if Rosalie ever felt like showing her, well, that wouldn't be the worst thing.

"I should make you regret that," Rosalie says, a flash in her darkening eyes, "but I'm not half the vampire I once was. I'll have to let you live."

"Thank you for my life, Lady Rosvar," Jess says with mock-reverence. She pulls open the front door. "And thanks for coming with me. I guess I'll see you-"

"Oh, you're not going to invite me up this time?"

Jess freezes. The door slips from her hand and slams shut. The welcome sign flaps against the glass. "What?"

Rosalie smiles a tad crookedly. "When you were drunk, you said I could come up and get my cloak back."

"Oh my god. That's so corny. I can do so much better."

"No, it very nearly _worked_." She breaks her gaze for a moment. "I realize that says more about me than you."

"And what does that say about you?"

"Easily dazzled?" she offers.

 _Dazzled_. Jess holds in the lovesick sigh that's begging to come out. She clears her throat in its stead. "You should really work on that. The bar should be _at least_ ten times that."

Rosalie's face softens. "You don't have to work for my attention. It's yours."

Jess feels her heart turn in her chest. The end of the night is already here. It almost feels like there's never enough time. Time to what? To talk about the skyline? Stand together in silence and pretend like her heart isn't clearly calling out her name? Jess swallows. "When can I see you again?"

"A few days. I'm going on a trip with Siobhan."

"A trip? Like a…hunting trip?" Jess says unevenly. Rosalie in the forest, invisible until it's too late.

"Yes," she admits with a bit of a downward look. "Does that bother you?"

"No," she says honestly. "You need to. Your eyes are dark."

Surprise passes over her perfect face. "You noticed that?"

"Well, I'm a-"

"Paleontologist. Yes, I'm aware," Rosalie says. She blurs across the short distance between them and loops her arms around Jess in a tight embrace. "It won't be long. Three or four days. Please try to stay out of trouble."

"No promises," Jess says, feeling the soft laugh in Rosalie's chest. "You be careful too." She squeezes her back, grateful Rosalie's marble frame can't crumble from the force of her; she can never be too much. The vampire pulls away a little and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. It's so brief, by the time Jess feels it, she's gone.

On the wind, she hears a thread of a whisper. _I will._


	8. Coheeries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i've heard of pining. not that there's any of that here..

Rosalie braids her hair over one shoulder as Siobhan steers them out of port. The morning is stale, all silvers and greys for miles, and the briny scent of the ocean only serves to slake the edge off her thirst. The blood of marine life is less satisfying than even the weakest red deer. But then, her usual diet has done almost nothing to cool her throat these last few weeks. She's been too reliant on herself, her own control.

Humans have rarely tempted her. Just last night in that auditorium full of them, warm from excitement and hot drinks, they barely moved her a centimeter, if that. They vanished in the white static of her overactive senses. But _Jessica_. For all her strength and iron restraint, around Jessica she feels uncontained. She feels _newborn_.

Drawn by her blood, dizzied by her smile, the blue of her eyes, her laugh.

She would sell her soul to taste her. She would burn herself alive for hurting her.

"Christ alive, girl," Siobhan mutters from the helm.

Rose ties off her braid and pushes it over her shoulder. "What?"

"Don't _what_ me. It's only a few days, you moony maiden."

Admittedly, yes, her thoughts _are_ too dramatic, but that doesn't mean Shibh should get the satisfaction. "I don't know what you're-"

"Please, Rosalie." Siobhan holds up a hand to stop her. Few things in life are as unnerving as being known, as having one's thoughts read from the look on their face. They have known each other for nearly five hundred years. She supposes that kind of familiarity would come naturally in a friendship so long, but Siobhan has a way of picking up where her human mother left off. Needling, knowing, silently watching.

"Is it so wrong of me?" Rose asks.

Siobhan looks on her with pity. "No, dear heart. You deserve to be happy. More than anyone else I know."

.

Underwater, the senses are warped. The most useful ones on land dull in the dark world beneath the waves. Sound echoes unevenly. Scent is almost useless. A wandering mind loses her prey. By the third time a squirming haddock evades her grip, she understands quite fully why Siobhan decided to take her out here instead of their usual trek into the Baltics. They're trading bears for scaly fish and skates. It's a lot to lose for a lesson.

"This is pointless!" she shouts. She clears the water from her face and slaps at the surf indignantly.

Shibh leans over the rail and barks with laughter. "Would you rather eat your human?"

"There are other ways. We could have been in Latvia by now wrestling bears."

"There's no challenge in that. Besides, nothing like the missed satisfaction of a porpoise to remind you that this is what you _chose_." She casts a hard look at Rose as she pulls herself up the side of the vessel. "I don't know how you keep your mind right with your singer hanging off you like that."

"She's more than her blood." Rose unzips her wetsuit and dries off with a faded red towel. "But yes, it _is_ difficult. Sometimes I worry I'll force the extinction of the deer in the area if she doesn't return home soon."

"Ah, but there's a whole ocean of fish!"

"How fortunate."

Shibh tosses over her bag with her dry clothes. Her cell phone slips out with her t-shirt. She catches it before it hits the ground and hisses in annoyance, a hand to her throat. She managed a few fish, but the swim was relatively fruitless. She feels almost angry with thirst.

"Are we really going to be out here for three days?"

"God no. If I don't get some real food, Scotland'll run _red_."

.

Traveling by sea reminds her of the distant past. It gets Siobhan a little nostalgic, but Rose mostly feels bogged down in memories. How she traveled without pause after the deaths of her sisters until 1988 when she returned to Rosvar for good. How sick she felt when she stayed somewhere too long. As if a place grew tarnished the more time she had to stop and think. She went from avoidance to immersion and neither have made her feel a glimmer of recovery.

She's grateful when they moor alongside a fishing boat in a little village a day's journey south of Guid. Repellant and disappointing as her few catches were, it was nice to get out of her head in the water for a little while, to throw away the restraint she's come to live by in Rosvar, especially lately. Shibh's message was clear enough. _If you plan to keep your blood singer around, every meal will start to feel like this one. Everything else in the world will lose its draw._

Rose checks her cell phone as they leave the docks, much to Shibh's amusement. There are a few texts from Jessica back from when there was still cell service. Nothing she can do about that now. "Maggie said when she came to stay with you, you'd never heard of those things. Now look at you."

"I still don't get it. Jessica is on hers incessantly. She told me I should get the Internet in the castle. It comes in waves. Did you know that? That sounds awful, _whatever_ it is. I don't-" Rose sighs when she feels her friend's eyes on her. She pockets the phone. "I don't want to hear it."

"I'm not saying a word," Shibh says innocently. "Now, let's see. What do you suppose is out here? No, bears I take it."

They're sort of in the middle of nowhere, but the edible fauna hardly varies on this huge rock, even in the broken up bits of the peninsulas. Rose puts her arm around her shoulders. "Plenty of deer."

"Fantastic. Why would anyone ever hunt humans?"

.

Ironically, Shibh is the first to take down a buck. Rosalie just ends up covered in dirt. She blames the switch in tactics she had to make underwater. They certainly don't translate to the rocky bluffs. She's all over the place in every sense, mind racing, instincts blaring. She feels pulled in ten directions at once, but most strongly toward Rosvar. It's as if her whole body is a compass oriented in a direct line home.

It isn't fair, really. There were times she would crash through the castle walls just to get away from the place for a weekend with Shibh. And it's been nice- despite her summiting thirst- to spend time with her old friend. Even if Siobhan might be having too much fun with all this.

"I seem to remember you being the most skilled hunter of your sisters. Is that a false memory?"

Rose pulls herself off the ground and dusts off her arms. "I'm sorry."

Shibh waves her hand dismissively and bats some dirt off of Rose's back. "I thought I taught you never to apologize unless someone's dead."

"Well, someone _is_ dead," she says, pointing to Shibh's fallen deer.

"Someone." Siobhan rolls her orangey eyes. It would take more than a long weekend hunting deer to shift the color all the way over from red to brown. "That's a good one. Did you get that from your human?"

…

…

Jess shuts the glass door against the howling wind and shudders in the dry heat of the lobby. She pulls her gloves off and moves over by the fireplace in the corner where Victoria is lying upside down on the couch reading a paperback.

"Where've you been?" the girl says, not even bothering to look up from her book. _Jane Eyre_ by the look of it.

"Your dad got his hands on another van. He needed help with the logo." She flicks her fingers out. "Rosvar Transport 2.0. Completely non-flammable."

"You say that now…" Victoria says, crossing her ankles against the tugboat painting hanging above the couch. Her red hair is barely brushing the ground.

"Yeah, yeah," she mutters as she rubs her hands together over the fire.

Victoria tosses her book aside. Jess can tell she's a little annoyed. They've spent the past few days seeing too much of each other. With Rosalie gone, instead of spending the time relaxing, she's been slightly hyperactive. It's crazy how much you can get done in three days. Really.

"So where is she?" the girl asks.

"What?"

"Well, I hope she comes back soon. I like you and all, but Ma says I should be more like you because of all the community service you've done this weekend. And I'm not about to stack wood for free just to measure up to a tourist."

"You should always try to help when you can."

"Yeah, you're so selfless." Victoria swings her legs forward and does a somersault off the couch, landing easily on her feet. She swipes her book and brushes by Jess' shoulder on her way out. "You just don't know what to do with yourself, do you?"

Before she has time to sit with that _sort of_ mean remark, her phone chirps in her pocket. She pulls it out and fumbles with it a little in her still-numb fingers. It's Angela wanting to FaceTime, which never happens, so it must be good.

"Hey," she says when her oldest friend's face pops up on the screen.

"God, hi!" Angela says, looking a little frazzled like she'd been asleep. It's about six in the morning in Washington. "Okay listen, I know you don't care anymore because you're in Scotland living your best life and all that, _but_ …"

"But?"

"Lauren texted me this morning saying that Alice texted her that she heard from Jane whose brother overheard Kate telling-"

"Ang. Where is this going?" Jess stuffs her gloves into her jacket pocket and heads upstairs to her room.

"Right, sorry. It's been a morning." She pushes up her glasses and takes a centering breath. "Like I said, I know you _don't_ care anymore, but I remember you told me about Edward and that girl from his office. Turns out they're together now."

"Good for them, I guess," Jess says, setting the phone down to shrug out of her jacket. "I mean, two weeks ago he flew all the way out here to try to force me to go back with him, so I guess it's Bella we should be feeling sorry for."

"He _what?_ "

Jess sighs and grabs the phone off the table. "It was horrible and completely overdramatic, even for my standards. I'll tell you all about it when I get back, but we're failing the Bechdel test every second we talk about him. Let's talk about something else."

Angela carries her phone into another room in her sleek Seattle apartment. Jess has been there once since she moved to Chicago, and the place is incredible. After college, Ang backpacked through Central America and took a million-dollar shot of some insanely-rare bird that was thought to be extinct. She sold it to _Nat Geo_ and cleaned up. Classic Angela. Winning and never breathing a word about it.

She stops in her kitchen and pulls some coffee beans out of her pantry. " _Anything_ else?"

"Yeah."

Angela smiles impishly. "So who's that blond gracing your Insta lately?"

Jess rests her chin on her palm and sighs only partly for show. "Ang, I met a girl."

Angela laughs. "I can see that."

"Her name is Rosalie. She's from London." _She drinks blood. She sparkles in the sunlight._

"Rosalie," Ang says, wiggling her shoulders. "Sounds fancy."

"She'd like to think so."

Angela leans over her counter and pulls her laptop into frame. She types something and scrolls down the page. "She's so pretty, I almost can't look," she says as she continues to look anyway.

She's made a handful of posts in the last few weeks. Nowhere near as many as she planned when she was still daydreaming this trip. Originally, she intended to be as annoying as possible about it, posting updates on every little thing she did just so the world would know that she's _fine_ , she's better than fine! She's thriving! But that all fell through when the van exploded.

Instead, she's just put up a few nice shots of the scenery and purposefully blurry "candids" she talked Victoria into taking when they were running errands around town for Charlotte.

Angela is talking about her private story which is mostly just Rosalie drawing- hair loose, a charcoal smudge across her cheek- or pushing away the camera, faking annoyance and doing a really bad job of it.

Jess sighs again. This time for real. It's been three days since they last saw each other. It shouldn't be a big deal. They're friends. _New_ friends at that. She shouldn't feel so knocked out of orbit just because Rosalie isn't right where she can find her. She knows all this, and yet, she _misses_ her. Thoroughly.

"What does she do?" Angela asks, bringing her back.

Jess thinks about it for a second and decides it best to conceal the whole _haunts a crumbled castle_ thing for now. "She's a musician. She plays the harp."

"Of course she does."

"Look! She painted this. _For me_." she says, holding up the small canvas. She's been staring at it instead of texting Rosalie every thought that pops into her head. Not that Rosalie would mind. She probably doesn't even know how to open her texts.

Angela leans closer to her camera. "I guess I should book a trip there myself if Scotland's so magical. Maybe I'll meet an angel guy and we can match."

"Rosalie would say angel and guy are…mutually exclusive."

"You know what, she's probably right, but I can dream." Angela turns away for a moment to pour her coffee. "You look good, Jess. Happier. I know these last few years have been…"

"I feel good. I really just needed to get away from everything. Maybe going to another country was kinda overkill, but I sort of love it here."

"Can't imagine why," Angela says with a playful sparkle in her eye. "Really, though. I haven't seen you this _dreamy_ in forever. Since…since-" Her brown eyes widen. " _Lauren._ "

Jess physically cringes at the memory of her high school self so twisted up in a crush, she could barely breathe let alone study for AP exams. "God, don't remind me." But Ang has a point. Kind of. Lauren was always so icy whether you were friends with her or not. She was pretty, but her cold attitude made her hot. It was one-sided attraction through and through. Lauren never even smiled at her.

With Rosalie, Jess has felt the cold of her and decided she could bear it. Try as she does to be a scary monster, she can't hide the way her face brightens when Jess pushes open the castle doors.

Jess looks down at the table beneath her hand. "I really like her, Ang."

"I can tell. I'm happy for you." Angela says sincerely. She sets her coffee mug down to cool and turns it idly. "Is she…?"

"I don't know." Jess feels a little cold. She's been wondering the same thing for weeks. "That's the thing! We spend hours and hours together reading _poetry_ and holding hands and she walks me home. And every time I think: _This is it! She's going to kiss me!_ And she doesn't. You know when you're _right_ _there_ with someone?"

"Maybe you just have to, you know…make the first move?"

"I can totally do that."

"Right. Jess, I'm pretty sure you've never done that in your life."

Jess crosses her arms. "Well, it can't be _that_ hard."

.

After dinner, Jess helps Charlotte wipe down the tables in the dining nook. There's one other guest at the moment, the service guy for the vending machines out back. Apparently, Charlotte makes his favorite every time he passes through. It was some kind of thick stew that nearly knocked Jess over by smell alone. Fortunately, he wolfed it all down before Jess came downstairs.

"You're leaving soon, aren't you?" Charlotte says as she flips a chair around to set it on top of the table. "Hate to see you go, you've been a joy. I do mean that. Whole town's taken with you just about."

"I've had the best time here, it's _nothing_ like I was expecting. Like, at all. But I think that's a good thing. I grew up in a little town like this. It's easy to forget how nice it is. I missed the quiet."

"Never run out of that here. Little too sleepy at times. Sometimes I think the place has keeled over." Charlotte laughs and tosses her towel over her shoulder as she reaches for the mop bucket. "So, what's next for you? I take it you won't be returning to that…er, _gentleman_ from the other night?"

"No, no. I…I actually have no clue." It hits her then, much too late that when she gets back, there's _nothing_ waiting for her. She'll have to start all over, and she has no idea where to begin. God, is she going to have to move back in with her parents? After the way they praised her for being so put-together last Christmas? No way. "I guess I'll look for a job… well-"

"Of course, you don't have to decide all that right now. And you're welcome to stay as long as you like, and we do hope you'll come back. Truth is, even during the right season we'd always make room for ya."

"I really appreciate that," Jess says, touched.

.

Twenty minutes later, she's upstairs sitting on her bed, wrapped in Rosalie's green cloak with her back to the window, sick of hoping for light.

She falls back against her pillows, feeling over-caffeinated even though she'd skipped coffee today. She hasn't been sleeping well lately. Unrelated, obviously. She _can_ handle this. It's not like she's breaking into the castle and trying on Rosalie's dresses and crying. Not yet, anyway.

They should study this feeling in a lab.

…

…

Impervious to seasickness and vertigo as she is, the ocean has always made Rose feel trapped. It's all psychological, this tightness in her chest. She doesn't doubt it stems from the countless drawn-out voyages she made with her sisters so long ago. Chelsea often felt nostalgic for Greece while Heidi felt the need to drag Rose with her to all corners of Prussia and France. Back then, she'd been reluctant and sour about it, unwilling to enjoy their time. Another on the list of the great regrets of her long life.

It still surprises her sometimes just how much the world has changed. For the life of her, she can't picture them living in today's world. If she can barely figure out a cell phone, Corin would be twice as lost. Chelsea would hate the way privacy has mutated- that you can just type a name into a search bar and find anything you want.

At the very least, they wouldn't be wearing old dresses and lighting candles. They would have preserved the castle for sentimental and historical purposes, but surely they would have opted for something that fit in better with the times. It's just what they did. Except for herself, they were all old enough to have lived in a world before cold stone towers. The castle was just another architectural trend to them.

"You're quiet," Siobhan says from the helm.

"I'm just thinking about them."

"Yeah?" Shibh looks over her shoulder with a little smile. "Once I took Renata out around here. Liam had just built me the most beautiful little sailboat, and I was about to take her out when _that_ _one_ crept up on me like a shadow. She was going on and on about something. Horses in the sky."

"Animals whose pelts were made of an infinite number of stars." Rose quotes fondly. "Horses in dark celestial meadows who fought without moving in ruby-colored places of complete silence. Places where we have been."

"Exactly like that! I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Never could with that one. Anyway, I managed to piece together that she wanted to come out with me. Of course I said yes, even if she was the _weird_ one that tended to avoid me. I thought maybe we could be friends after a day at sea. But _god_. If I would have known she'd spend the whole trip bouncing her fancy poetry off me and complaining that _I lacked vision_ …" Shibh trails off. She pushes her hair out of her face. "Needless to say, she swam home."

Rose's chest wells with emotion at the memory of Renata, delirious with inspiration. She used to twirl her fingers through Rose's hair and speak her poetic nonsenses. She often dealt in certainties, like an oracle. "She never told me that."

"She gave me the poem the next day. I still have it somewhere. But it's only half. The rest she wrote in the sand on the ocean floor. I wasn't about to go diving for it… I think, maybe I should have," she says plaintively, then looks up again after summoning some cheer. "I know they were your world."

"I lost half of my heart when they died. You know that," Rose says. "I only wish I understood why Chelsea forced me to survive that night. Then maybe I wouldn't have spent the last three centuries inside myself, without hope or cause. It wasn't even spite keeping me here."

"She would have saved you all if she could. I really believe that, Rose. You were the youngest, and least-equipped to fight."

"They were just _humans_ ," Rose seethes. "I could have taken care of it myself."

"Maybe there was more to it than that. Chelsea was never straightforward. You don't actually know what was going on back then. Neither of us does. And we'll probably never know," Siobhan says grimly. "But I'm grateful for her every day. She saved you, Rose. I don't know what I'd do if all of you had…"

"I've been…less than myself. Mostly I've felt myself become a servant to sadness, but there is no excuse. I shouldn't have abandoned you in your grief. If you'd let me apologize-"

Shibh waves her hand dismissively, discreetly turning her head to blink back the venom in her eyes. "You're here now." She smiles, looking a bit misty. "Besides, I had Liam and Mags to keep me company. Don't go thinking you're the only light in my life."

"Oh, I wouldn't dare."

"It would seem I'm not the only one in yours either. As of quite _recently_."

Heat floods her whole body like wind through her chest, the hollowness of her has filled with dark red longing. There's no use in denying it. The pull she feels for Rosvar isn't for the cold halls of home but for the arms of the human waiting for her there.

"I wish they could have met her," she says quietly, as if afraid of scaring off her feelings. But all being quiet does is lure out the real stuff. Instead of stacking up her walls, Rose hemorrhages the truth. "Sometimes I think it would not be difficult to love her."

"It seems like you already do," Shibh says in a brief moment of compassion. Watching it fade is like slipping from the edge of a cliff. Siobhan's gift is for influencing odds. She's always preparing for the end of everything on the off-chance the universe betrays her. "And if you do, then you'll think of _her_ , Rose. You say you won't turn her, then don't take her life from her. Humans are only here for a moment."

"You think I don't know that? My human life was a _blink_. My time as a Rosvar was like water through my fingers. I understand how quickly things can end. Believe me."

"What will she have with you in that castle? What about her dreams? Her life? All the things you deny yourself locked in there with your ghosts. I won't tell you what to do. I'm just asking you to think."

Shibh turns away from the helm and looks out over the churning waves. The salty air lifts her dark hair and the slanted sun reflects off her diamond skin, creating a rather powerful picture. She's always had such an assuming air to her, even in her relinquishment. She frowns slightly and her red eyes drill into Rose's.

"I worry about the future so much, sometimes I forget it's not real," she says and then huffs out a brief sigh. "I meant it when I said you deserve to be happy. Just think on it, alright?"

She would be lying if she said she'd never considered any of this before. In truth, she feels quite tormented by it, the idea of robbing Jessica of her life for her own happiness. In her head, it's all so sinister; a vampire half in love with a human, but the moment she sees her rounding the bend in those awful pink boots or standing before a painting with a hand raised to touch it- nothing else makes any sense. Nothing else matters at all.

"I will," Rose says finally.

"In the meantime," she says, looking toward Guid's half-empty port. She doesn't have to say anything more.


	9. Upbringing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! This chapter is a bit long and a mix of cute/angst, so I guess you have That to look forward to! Also, I've changed Rose's backstory accordingly, but some of the original trigger warnings remain, so just keep that in mind.
> 
> We're getting so close to the end, I'm excited n I hope u are too! <3

From Laurent, Jess learns the dark water churning below the rock she's sitting on is called Loch Malmore. The black rocks and muddy silver sand make it look properly ancient and at home guarding the castle, but she has trouble finding beauty in it knowing that twelve girls walked in and never came out. How terrible does life have to be for a watery grave to feel more inviting than your own home?

She's just a human. She has no heightened senses or powers like Rosalie's sisters, but sitting here in the dying rays of sunlight, she feels a little of what Corin must have felt at the end.

She shivers in the cool night air and pulls her scarf tighter around her neck. It's too cold to be out here, but if she goes back to her room she'll just scroll through her phone until the sun comes up just like she's been doing for days now. It's so quiet here. She's only now noticing after a month of loving it all so much. Or maybe she's just looking for flaws so it will seem like a relief when she returns home next week.

But how could it?

Jess breaks off a bit of the jagged rock beneath her and tosses it into the water. _You. Come crashing into my life_. How could she leave her like this? She's managed to carve a new normal out of this place. Going back to Chicago never to spend another slow afternoon sharing a book with Rosalie or keeping her company while she paints seems categorically wrong. But how much longer can she stay here?

Her watch vibrates, a silly exercise reminder she set up when she got it for her birthday from her parents. Normally, she ignores it when it's inconvenient, but today she stands up, realizing suddenly how long she's been sitting out here in the dark.

The cool wind drags ripples across the smooth surface of the lake a dozen feet below. Her rock took a little bit of strategic climbing to get to- not exactly the best place to get stranded in the dark, but she has her phone's flashlight and her trusty rubber boots. It's a little difficult with just one free hand, but she's able to retrace her steps down the side of the rock. From here, all she has to do is Lara Croft shimmy across a narrow ledge to get within jumping distance of the rock that's actually connected to the shore.

And her watch thinks she never exercises.

With her back against the rock, she inches along. The thing about Malmore is that people don't swim in it. It only has about ten feet of decent beach before it drops into oblivion or something. Plus, it's _cold_. Year-round according to Peter. The twelve girls on top of that mark this a pit of despair and- why'd she come out here again?

She's almost across when something moves beneath the surface. Something big. Her brain betrays her and shows her giant woman-eating crocodiles or the eel from Mario. _Whatever_ it is, she'd like to get the fuck out of here before it decides to greet her.

She makes it across to a wider spot and flashes her light to try to find the closest part of the next rock to make the jump.

It's not that far, maybe a few feet, but it was easier on the way out. She basically just had to drop down. Jumping up is a different story. She's not _actually_ Lara Croft. She barely skated by in high school gym. Mostly because she used to ditch twice a week to work on her college apps, but still.

She backs up as much as she can, hoping it's enough of a running start to make it.

"I leave you alone for four days…" a silvery voice says from above her.

Jess looks up, dizzy out of nowhere. Rosalie smiles down at her in the light of her flashlight, half-cast and blurry around the edges like a found-footage monster. Nerves skitter through her- mostly excitement sparking off against quelled longing.

"You're back!" Jess says, forgetting her predicament. Suddenly the rock seems to tilt, she lets go of the face and stumbles forward like an off-balance idiot. The black water surges at her like an attack dog. She braces herself for the fangs of ice, but they never come. Instead, she feels arms wrap around her midsection and the rush of air in her ears.

When she opens her eyes they're about a hundred feet from the water. She has a fistful of Rosalie's soft white t-shirt and her other arm is pinned awkwardly between them, but Jess can't think of anything except the way they're still pressed together. Rosalie smells faintly of sea salt along with her usual flower petals. Jess sighs contentedly and rests her forehead against the curve of her collarbone. "Thanks for the rescue."

Rosalie's arms tighten around her. "Foolish of me not to specify. Throwing yourself into Malmore does _not_ fall under staying out of trouble."

"I needed a dramatic thinking spot."

"Well, in that case."

Jess thinks of the way the vampire looked in the white light of her phone's flashlight- the overpowering shadows and near glow of her golden eyes. "You'd tell me if you were the Blair Witch, right?" Jess murmurs into her shirt, all at once feeling four days of built-up exhaustion hit her like a freight train.

"No, I don't think I would," she says, words curved and low. Jess feels them more than she hears them. "I don't know who that is."

Jess exhales a laugh. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

.

The days thin out and fall away like leaves from a branch. Jess spends her mornings with Charlotte and tea made properly. Sometimes Victoria joins them in the inn's small kitchen, blustering about her exams and the deadlines for her uni applications- which Jess helps her with after she asks very nicely. Crowded around the small table in the corner, warm from the ovens, Jess becomes aware just how much she'll miss all this when she gets back to Chicago for the dull dregs of fall and the first initial stab of true winter.

And Rosalie. Of course Rosalie. So inextricably wrapped into all her memories of this place. Rosalie organizing her tools in the garage, painting intentionally shaky still-lifes, and somehow mastering every possible vegetarian recipe Jess digs out of the recesses of the Internet. Jess, for her part, watches it all with admiration and sometimes awe when she forgets to hold back.

They spend so much time together, Jess sometimes forgets the timer over her head counting down her departure- incidentally, something they never talk about. But why would they when Rosalie seems so interested in her friends and her parents, her life pre-Chicago? Rosalie is a good listener, but she's also not afraid to tell Jess when she's talking nonsense- which is a lot. Her advice is good too, even if it sometimes borders on medieval. Unfortunately, the guillotine is no longer a viable option for the everyday troubles of a twenty-something Chicago girl.

But the longer Jess spends in the castle- mostly quietly sharing the space with her ageless friend- the more it gets her thinking. Sometimes Rosalie uses her inhuman speed seemingly without realizing it. Sometimes the sun breaks in through a gap in the curtains and beams off her skin like iridescent fire. Sometimes when Jess moves too quickly, she twitches and frowns with a tortured kind of restraint.

After a while, Jess is simply too curious to barricade herself any longer.

"Hey, Rose?" she asks one evening over her vegan macaroni. The vampire glances over her shoulder, brightened by the shortened version of her name. "How did it happen? How did you…die?"

Rosalie bristles and Jess feels like a jerk for springing it on her like that. It's been circling her for a while now, and it's never seemed like the right time to bring it up. Still, no excuse for shoehorning it into their conversation about Florence in the early fourteenth century.

"I jumped. From a tower quite like this one."

"You…jumped, like…"

"Like suicide? No. More like desperation," she says darkly before reeling it back inside herself. "It's not a happy story. I'd prefer it not to live in your mind… But I can see by your face my silence is wasted."

"You don't have to tell me."

Rosalie turns away from the bureau where she had been rearranging her perfume bottles. "You say that, but if I don't tell you, in half an hour you're bound to get that little wounded look on your face. See! That one right _there!_ " she says, pointing a pale finger at Jess' face. "Stop that!"

"I'm not making a face!"

"Yes, you are!" Rosalie accuses. "It's in your eyes. They get somehow _bluer_."

"That's literally impossible!"

"If I tell you, will you stop?"

"Well, since I'm not doing anything. No."

Rosalie gives her a sharp look that probably could have leveled the village below, but Jess knows it's just hot air. She's all bark all day.

"Okay, okay. I'll try to fix my face."

"Thank you," Rosalie says with an air of haughtiness. The moment melts from her as she collects herself. Jess gives her an encouraging nod, and she begins.

"I was born into nobility in the twelfth century."

Jess balks at the weight of it. She figured Rosalie to be pretty old- at least three centuries, but _eight?_

"My whole life was a pithy construct to grow my father's influence. When I was of age, I was betrothed to a distant lord. He had a taste for battle. It kept our engagement long and fit for an untimely end. I prayed day and night he would fall on his sword and free me. But he never did."

"How old were you?"

"Too young," Rosalie says stiffly. "Always too young. By the time I died, I suppose I was just a little older than you are now." She frets with the fingertips of her gloves idly before pulling them off completely and tossing them onto the bureau.

"Before she died, my mother always told me there's no place in this world for beautiful things. The first time I met my betrothed, I knew from the look in his eye that I would be going from one locked tower to another. And it was just the same as it always had been. For years, I appeared on his arm. I endured his parties and his invulnerability in battle, his constant drunkenness regardless of the turnout of the fight. Years of this. Parties and stab wounds, mead and blood. Parties, victories, ambushes, poisoning. Parties-"

"Poisoning?" Jess questions.

"I tried my best," she says wryly.

Jess glances at her macaroni. "I will never take you to a party. I promise."

That gets a smile out of her. She continues with less gravity, but Jess knows no stupid joke is ever going to make this better for her.

"I found some small peace with his brother. He studied medicine and certainly wouldn't survive a day on the battlefield. I played the harp for him, and in turn, he gave me a book he'd written himself about the medicinal uses of herbs in the area- hand-drawn renditions, near-illegible script. I remember it was the only thing I treasured in that cold place. A gift. From my friend," Rosalie says. The words themselves are wistful, but there is no longing in her tone, only a deeply anchored coldness.

"I was used to being paraded around and then sealed away, all my life it was like that, but one night- the last night, I could feel that it was different. I had been resisting him for years. My mother died giving birth to my youngest brother. I was terrified by the very idea. He seemed to understand on some level. More often I had the excuse of his battle wounds, but that night he'd be put off no more. He wanted an heir. He was willing to hurt me for it. I ran to his brother. My last mistake. A whole room of them, waiting for me."

Rosalie looks away, eyes shining. She tucks her hair behind her ear. "How many times have you heard my story? What's worse than a woman taking up space? If she runs, how sweet it is to chase her. Never human but prey. All my life."

"Rose," Jess says quietly. "It's okay, you can stop. I'm sorry. I'm-"

"I tried to escape while they slept, but I accidentally woke the brother. The man who pretended to be my friend for so many years. He chased me, and I jumped."

Jess winces, helpless to the vague image of the fall. The crudeness of the landing.

"The castle stood on a cliff. I landed on the jagged rocks below, inches from the water. Just another missed oblivion. I thought it to be my last until a figure eclipsed the moon. I was turned that night by a very old and powerful vampire who had watched me fall. He later told me he thought I was an angel cast from Heaven. Stefan changed me because of the way I look. How _tragic_ for someone like me to die so young?" she says blisteringly. "I only wanted it to end. Instead, he gave me an eternity of aftermath…but there was one blessing deep in disguise."

"What was it?"

Rosalie looks up, the gold absent from her eyes again. Cold butterflies cram Jess' stomach when she speaks. "I could avenge my own death. And I did. One by one. Saved the lord and his brother for last." Her smile is sharp, a bloody victory. "They say vengeful souls are born from violent death. That's how I know Hell is an awful place. I dragged them there."

"They deserved it," Jess says. The immediacy of her response seems to arrogate Rosalie in some dark and delicate way.

"You're quick to side with me."

"Like there's any other option. Yeah, killing people is bad, but…they killed you first." Jess crosses her arms. "I think they deserved worse. All of them. _Especially_ doctor boy. I'll go back in time just to kick his ass."

Rosalie laughs and lifts a hand to calm her. "You're just the kind of person Chelsea would have on her panel of advisors. Brilliant, but tilted on morality's sliding scale."

"Are you saying I should break into politics? I think I could be dictator of the world by the time I hit thirty. _After_ , my paleontology degree though."

"Oh, of course," Rosalie says, her smile brilliant in spite of the violence of her life. They share in the superficial lightness of the moment as long as they can. Sometimes that's the best you can do, hold on to the stupid jokes that break up the despair.

Eventually, it fades though, and Jess feels impelled by sincerity. She knows that Rosalie is aware of her sympathy, but something makes her say it out loud. Just one more time.

"I'm sorry they hurt you. I'm sorry you can't get peace, but I'm glad you told me," she says, and Rosalie nods, stoic to the end. "I'm happy you're here with me. I think that's probably selfish of me, but…I can't help it. Guess you'll have to poison me."

"A waste of cyanide."

"Hey!"

"Hey, what? I prefer your heart _beating_."

Jess feels her heart thud solidly as if in response. She wonders just how difficult it is for Rosalie to be so close to her, always aware of the blood that runs through her. How does she do it? "But it would be easier for you if it weren't, right?"

Rosalie's face hardens. "Don't say things like that."

"Sorry," Jess says quickly, having ruined the moment. Something she's always been pretty good at.

"Humans think the present is nothing more than a link that changes the future into the past, but the present is massive," Rosalie says, suddenly very far away even though she hasn't moved from the window. "It's also all you have. Your life, right now. Your heart beats, and you don't even know it, but I could pick you out of a crowd by it- I hear it when you choose to leave the village each day. I hear it now."

Jess gets up and rushes to the window. With her hands on the sill, she leans forward and squints at the rugged landscape until she picks out the edge of a building on the other side of a hill. "All the way across the lake?"

"Yes. I can almost keep time by it, except you are much too easily excited," she says with a high-flown kind of teasing smile. She bumps her shoulder into Jess'. "It jumps about."

Jess decides right then that mortality is just a big joke made up so vampires can sit around laughing at humans and their every embarrassment plain in the Morse code of their hearts. It's only a little bit mortifying that Rosalie has definitely known about every stupid freak-out she's had since they _met_.

"I'm only joking. I ignore it when I can. For your sake."

"Using your powers for good?"

"Never." She looks down at their hands resting on the sill. "I lied before. I can't ignore it."

"My heart?"

She nods almost shyly. "I've tried. It's very difficult, you know."

Jess realizes then that this is probably Rosalie's repressed English or medieval vampire way of trying to tell her something soft. She covers her cool fingers with her own, very aware of the rhythm of her heart in her chest. She hopes it's telling Rosalie something nice.

"I don't want you to ignore it."

.

So maybe making the first move is trickier than Jess could have guessed. What would Angela say? Something about girl power and feminism for sure. Back when it mattered, Jess' kind of flirting consisted of playfully roasting her crush of the month until they fell awkwardly in love with her and asked her out. Even Edward had taken the lead when they first started dating.

With Rosalie, teasing her just results in an equally stinging comeback (only her words are prettier and feel like compliments no matter what they really are) or, more often, a history lesson. But how do you change tactics when you only have one speed? God, _where_ is her adaptability? She'd never survive in the wild. Or 1438 for that matter.

The thing is, it would be so easy to bridge the gap. To get close enough to kiss her. They've been there a million times these past weeks. But something always happens. Or nothing at all, which is worse. But the date of her flight home is creeping up on her. They never talk about it, but it's always hovering just over their heads. Maybe that's what's stopping them. The shelf-life of it all.

But it _isn't_ 1438 when every goodbye was pretty much final. There are airplanes and Skype and international phone plans. Goodbye doesn't have to mean gone. It wouldn't be a waste of love. Not even close.

.

Three nights before her flight home, Jess invites Rosalie to her purple room at the inn to watch a movie. A good one- at least by her standards, which isn't saying much of anything at all. She gives everything four stars in her film app, she can't help it. It takes so much to make a movie.

She tells herself over and over again that it's time. Time to stop exchanging devastatingly vague and charged confessions and spit out the truth, no matter how clumsy. It's a really great resolve, and she's proud of it too. Until Rosalie knocks on the door, and all her stacked up intention topples.

Rosalie shows up overdressed as always and oblivious to it even as Jess pulls open the door in a pair of fleece joggers and a t-shirt she only ever sleeps in.

"So," she says, looking over Jess' shoulder to the TV mounted on the wall, "aliens?"

She looks excited underneath some half-attempt at concealment. This is about the fourth movie they've watched together. At first, Jess tried the classic Keira Knightley route, thinking Rosalie would appreciate the drama and romance of it all, but she seemed almost bored with it. Which was fair enough seeing as she actually had to live through those times. It was pretty much by accident that she figured out made-for-TV sci-fi is more Rosalie's thing. For whatever reason, she _likes_ stupid movies with explosions and lasers and aliens that look like Jell-O.

Jess steps aside to let her in. "Aliens," she confirms with mock solemnity. Next time, she tells herself. Next time she'll tell her.

Halfway through the invasion, Jess is still trying to figure out what she recognizes the lead actor from. She's so preoccupied, she almost doesn't notice the way Rosalie leans back on her hands and looks up at the low ceiling. Eventually, Jess caves and looks it up on her phone and finds out he played a corpse on an episode of a crime procedural she binged last year.

Satisfied, she tosses her phone aside and looks over at the vampire and the mild look on her profiled face. "Where are you?" Jess whispers.

Rosalie blinks. "Thinking. Siobhan says I don't do enough of that lately."

"Yeah, right. Half the time I think your brain is gonna start smoking if I don't distract you."

Rosalie leans over her. "Well, you are very annoying- I mean _distracting_."

"Without me, you'd be so bored. You wouldn't even have aliens to draw."

"I suppose you're right. You're a terrible inspiration."

"Aw. That's so sweet. You're so soft right now." Jess reaches up to touch her marble cheek. Rosalie flinches slightly, almost negligibly. She does that sometimes, Jess has noticed. Not often but enough to mean something.

Rosalie's eyes take on an apologetic downcast. "I am not used to…"

Jess drops her hand instead to her long blond tresses. "It's okay. I know I can be a little too touchy sometimes."

"No, it's not that. It's been eight centuries. I've dealt with most of my…intimacy issues. Your lack of ulterior motive, however, that throws me off," she says.

Jess furrows her brow, and Rosalie frowns as if she just heard her own words.

"Maybe I still have some issues."

"Maybe… But that's okay. I'm a little messed up too. It's completely normal. I hope." The last part comes out dolefully, so she flashes a smile to catch the upswing. "What were you thinking about?"

Rosalie exhales, measured. "You."

"Me?"

"Of course you. Who else? The spiders in the cobwebs?" she says with a little bite in her tone.

"Okay. Me," Jess says with her hands up innocently. "What about me?"

She shrugs halfway but stops herself as if disliking the gesture itself. "I never would have… When I…" She trails off, appearing frustrated. It doesn't seem like something that happens to her often. She would probably be able to give a Pulitzer acceptance speech five minutes from now with no preparation, but _this_ trips her up? Jess smiles at that. At her. Rosalie notices her amusement and scoffs. She turns her head away.

"I'm being patient," Jess insists.

"Oh, is this patience on you? It's unbecoming."

"Exactly." Jess motions around the room with one arm. "I don't know if you know this, but we're alone. It's only me."

The scowl on her face sharpens. "You have a habit of stomping on things."

She shrugs and goes back to twisting Rosalie's long hair around her fingers. "I can't help it."

"I suppose I could stand to be trampled now and again. Isolation has made me arrogant." Rosalie grasps her fingers and pulls them gently from her hair. "What I was _trying_ to say is… I care for you. Sometimes too much."

Jess feels the stupid urge to tease her but holds it in right next to the bubbling in her chest. "Too much?"

"Yes. Entirely."

"But?" she tries.

Rosalie rolls her glowy eyes. " _But_ I think that under the circumstances, that's not such a bad thing."

Jess sits up halfway on her elbows. "Maybe I stomp on things, but _you_ dance around stuff. Which is so unlike you by the way. I'm pretty sure you could stomp a hell of a lot harder than me."

Rosalie turns her head away again, looking like a frosty exile. She looks so tortured, Jess regrets pushing her like this.

"Hey, I didn't mean to ma-"

"I put myself so above humans. Superior in every way, a half-step from perfection. I always have. I sit here and look out and I imagine you all walking around with broken hearts because you can't contain the enormity of your emotions. But the truth is… I am _worse_ than you are." She turns back to Jess then with an empty grimace like an icicle falling. "My sadness and heartbreak have chased me back into the castle. I fear I'll never recover. Even when it's nothing but rubble, I will be there. Beneath the debris."

Jess can see the lines solitude has worn into her. The way she holds herself back at every turn, the way her smiles fade so suddenly as if she becomes aware and pulled out of the moment. As if she feels the ghostly hands of her sisters upon her shoulders. Jess thinks of the extra chill in the air around there. Whether or not ghosts are real, the castle is undeniably haunted.

"But you. When I see you- in my chest, it feels _violent_. I can't trust that part of me to keep you safe."

This again. Jess thought they were long past this. "I told you," she says as evenly as she can manage. "I'm not scared."

"I am."

She sits up, not quite expecting that, but it's Rosalie after all. She thinks she's a monster and not an angel floating around humming Carly Rae Jepsen's B-sides. Jess touches her cool face, bringing her back to her. "What are you scared of? Really?"

"Forgetting myself," Rosalie says, turning into her palm. Her eyes flick to Jess'. "Doing something I can't take back."

Jess feels her heart clatter. "You won't."

"No," she says faintly, "I won't. But it still terrifies me. I've hurt people before. By accident. And their blood- It was nothing close to yours."

"You've kept yourself here alone for decades. I have no doubt you're _really_ good at denying yourself the things you want," Jess says lightly. She brushes her thumb over her cheek. "Can I make it easier for you? Like should I start wearing turtlenecks or something? Because I have this totally cute one with like, flowers on the-"

Rosalie laughs unexpectedly, and Jess almost jumps at the sound. She elbows her in the ribs, probably only giving herself a bruise in the process.

"I'm trying to be considerate! I'm _sorry_ I'm not a vampire expert!"

Rosalie only laughs harder. Jess rolls her eyes and drops back against the pillows.

 _Violent_ , she'd said, this feeling in her chest. But to Jess, it's more like uncontainable brightness- a prism caught in a cross-light. Jess puts her hand over her heart briefly as Rosalie refocuses on the movie they've been neglecting. Rosalie twists a strand of her long pale hair around her finger and glances over her shoulder with a sweet kind of hidden smile before turning back to the screen for good.

…

…

_Just think on it, alright?_

Rose gently runs her fingers through the length of Jessica's hair as she balances on the edge of sleep through the credits of the movie. Alien invasion halted, Earth safe for the time being. Jessica fell out just before it wrapped up. Left herself on a cliffhanger, unfortunately.

"I should go," Rose says quietly. "It's late."

"Time's not real for you," Jessica murmurs into her pillow. She reaches out blindly until she feels Rose's arm. Her hand is warm, like sunlight. Her blue eyes open slowly like it's quite the task. "Stay until I fall asleep?"

Rose lost the ability to say no to her after a week. By now she'd give her just about anything, run across the ocean floor if she had to. This is exactly what Shibh wanted her to think about when taking this entire friendship into consideration. What she feels is surely too intense. It doesn't match the days. Doubt grows like weeds.

But Jessica isn't the only thing. Every emotion she's had in the past three hundred years has been amplified beyond recognition. Within the walls of the castle, she was safe, the _world_ was safe from her; Rosvar, an entire network of her nervous system. To leave here would be to leave an integral piece of herself.

Jessica has her life in America. When she gets home, she'll start over and she'll get everything she ever wanted, Rose just knows. Wonderful things will find her. And it's a beautiful picture; Jessica, bright with happiness, fulfilled and successful, surrounded by friends and everything good in life. No crumbling castles in sight, no bottomless lakes or time-frozen villages. No damaged vampires clinging to her, holding her back. No ghosts.

She pulls a blanket over Jessica before she leaves, taking care not to disturb her- something she could never begin to muster. They've been spending so much time together lately, and Rose has cherished every minute, but bleeding the truth every time they meet is foolish. Everything in life ends at a cliff, and they're fast coming up on one.

…

…

At dinner on her last evening in Rosvar, Peter and Charlotte present her with a shiny blue suitcase as a replacement for the deceased one. She thanks them genuinely, even if she would rather go without the reminder that she's going to have to leave tomorrow.

Victoria has a class in the morning, so she mutters her partially-sarcastic goodbye and passes over her worn copy of _Jane Eyre_ and a little Polaroid of the two of them posing by James' forklift with the words _Rosvar's eighth wonder_ scribbled on the blank space beneath as a parting gift. Jess hugs her and she only pretends to squirm for a second.

Rosalie has been gone for the past day and a half hunting. The timing isn't great, but her eyes were so black the last time they saw each other it was probably necessary. Though she should be back by now. It's late but Jess decides to head down the rough dirt path to the castle.

It sprinkles a bit as she walks, but the night air feels nice and sharp enough to keep her pace up so as not to lose her nerve. It's her _last_ night. She has to do something, _say_ something. Spill her guts, bleed the truth. Anything. She just can't go home without telling her how she feels.

Rosalie isn't at the door when she arrives. It's not totally unusual, but it doesn't fill her with confidence. Especially since the air feels heavier in some enduring, inexplicable way. And really, all it takes is one glimpse at her inside her bedroom at the top of the stairs for Jess to put together that Rosalie's in a beyond-sour mood.

Sitting by the window- not even looking out it- with her chin in her palm. Scowling at nothing.

Jess knocks needlessly on the doorframe. She decides to tread lightly until she can feel out whatever mood this is. "Are you okay?"

"I've become a ghost," Rosalie says simply.

"Okay, I just thought you were a vampire," Jess says, trying to ease her with some lightness that she's sorely lacking this evening.

"You don't understand… There's so little of me left, it's-" She looks over at Jess, nearly unrecognizable in the stranglehold of her own suffering. "I have died too many deaths that were not mine."

Jess steps further into the room and pulls the heavy curtains shut. In a better headspace, Rosalie would have preferred them closed. "Where are you?" Jess mutters.

Hearing that, Rosalie cools marginally. "You're going home tomorrow."

"Yeah. In the morning." Jess shifts uncomfortably. Maybe Rosalie's mood isn't so strange. "Maybe I can stay longer."

"What for?"

"For…for you. I- I thought there was sort of…something going on with us." She feels so clumsy admitting it like this.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me. _This_ matters to me. I've never felt-"

"I'm _dead_. Siobhan's right. I've made myself worse."

"Rose…"

"Never mind that." Rosalie smiles at her, but it's too bright- too reliant on her vampiric charm. She looks so incredibly sad. "You have your fresh start. You can do anything now. You can go to California like you planned and pick up where you left off."

Jess feels some measure of alarm rising through her confusion. A cliff. "You're acting like we'll never see each other again."

Rosalie continues on as if Jess had never spoken at all. "Or you can chase a new dream. You can go to the beach on a sunny day. You can forget how to speak after a few glasses of wine. You can go fall in love w-"

"Just stop," Jess says, hurt in ways without names. The startled look across Rosalie's face only makes it worse. "How can you say that? How do you not know?"

"Know what?"

"That I'm in love with you!" Jess says into the stillness of the room. The admission wraps around her ribs like thorns of nerves. She's never been good and keeping things inside. "And what I _want_ is to be here with you."

Rosalie stiffens. "Don't say things like that."

Jess blinks, blindsided. The thorns around her dig so suddenly into her skin. "What?"

Her eyes turn cold. She stands and towers. "You want to abandon your life, your dreams to bring me flowers and rot in this castle together? All the while your life passes you by? Maybe there is something wrong with you."

She may be a head taller, but Jess stands up to her all the same. "You're not rotting, you're just sad. And that's okay. I know you're trying to hurt me, but I don't understand why."

"You have the whole world. I can barely leave these walls."

"Why does that matter?" Jess asks. It almost feels like pleading. "Please, talk to me. What's happening right now? Why are you acting like this?"

"Because I am not good for you!" Rosalie turns from her. In a flash of blue, she's across the room with her back against the wall. "I tell you I'm a monster only alive to kill, and you don't care at all! I tell you my past and all I've done, and you try to comfort me!"

"You're not a monster. You're _not_. It's not your fault what happened to y-"

"Beyond that, I am _unwell_."

Already snapped in half from her desperate love admission that's still echoing around the cold stone room, Jess falters. This isn't going anywhere close to what she expected. Maybe it was silly to hope for so much. But giving up feels worse. Even with Rosalie in this half-panicked state, leaving her with this as their goodbye isn't right.

"I just want you in my life, Rose. I'm not asking you to rejoin society tomorrow morning. I know what you've been through. I wouldn't do that," Jess says with as much behind it as she can manage. "And you're not bad for me. You're my friend. You've helped me so much, and I know I've helped you too. I've seen it. You think you're this…irredeemable monster, but you're not. I know you're not. You're more human than anyone I've known in forever. I wish you could see that."

She means it with all her heart which is why it hurts more for her to watch the misery deepen in Rosalie's face.

"Please just go," Rosalie says, and Jess hears the note of finality. It says, _give up now_. But how could she? They've come so far only to drop off the face of the earth over what? Nothing dressed up as a problem?

"But Rose-"

"Jessica," she says harshly. Her name serves as a cold and withering warning. Rosalie points to the door. "I want you to leave me."

…

…

_I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete._

With a hand to the glass, Rose watches the human stumble from the castle to the gate. She risks one last look up at the tower, but Rose is already out of sight against the wall mere inches from the window. Below, Jessica's heart beats erratically as she runs. Rose can hear her slip, the tear of her skin, the bloom of blood. She screws her eyes shut and forces herself to stay against the wall.

_I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete. I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete. I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete. I've become passive. I don't invent, I don't yearn. I manage, I cope. I am not complete. I live in a hole punched in reality._

She was needlessly cruel, but it was all the truth up until the very end. _I want you to leave me_. If she were alive, truly alive, she never would have been able to get the words out. Jessica's love was so apparent, she could feel it weeks ago. It would have taken something monumental to shatter it. She came as close as she knows how. To love a vampire is a curse all its own.

The night deepens as the storm really gets going. Dark sheets of rain rush down the window. The streets of the village flood. The lake gains depth through dirty runoff. By the time morning comes, Rose still hasn't moved from the wall.

It was a mistake. Telling her to leave. Escorting her home. Scaring her away. Inviting her to tea. Hurting her.

Another century will pass in the blink of an eye and she'll be yet another ghost in the haunting of Rosalie Hale.

Why did Chelsea force her to survive alone? To live out eternity in pain?

The sun is bright when she finds herself outside. Her skin glows and shines, she's lit up like something people would kill for. The dark water of the lake pulls at her. Malmore held her when the world ended, cradled at the bottom while her sisters burned.

She walks straight into the shadowy depths, and the water welcomes her home.


	10. The Glass Staircase From Heart to Shoulder

The ride to the airport is deadly silent. Peter says Rosvar Transport 2.0 runs like a dream. He pats the dashboard affectionately and thanks Jess for her masterful stencil work along the side. It's a pretty transparent but unbelievably sweet attempt to cheer her up. And she's happy to ride with him in a van that isn't in danger of exploding, but it's difficult to summon the right amount of cheer.

"Is everything alright?" he finally asks, deciding to cut right through it. "Seems like you're not yourself."

"Just fell in love with a ghost, I guess," she mutters more to the dashboard than to him.

"Ah," he says, nodding sagely. "That'll happen up here."

This feeling is pretty useless, whatever it's called. She tries to shove it away but it's everywhere. She sits up a little in her seat and decides to change the subject. "Peter, was it always your dream to run an inn?"

"God, no," he gruffs. "I wanted to be a ship captain. Then a race car driver. A fireman. You name it. I fell through it all on my way here. I had a million dreams I didn't like so much once I got there, so I just turned around and tried something else."

"And that worked?"

"Not very well, I'll tell ya, but I learned a lot. And then I met Char, and the rest-" He lefts a hand from the wheel and gestures vaguely. "You know how it goes. History."

Rose didn't mean a word of it, Jess knows. She couldn't have. Not when just a few days ago they were watching crappy movies together and trying not to trip and fall and blurt out an _I love you_. But then Rosalie had tuned their goodbye into a cliff. An end. And Jess walked right off it.

_Because I am not good for you!_

Rosalie who helped her get the spine to tell Edward to fuck off forever. Rosalie who insisted there's nothing wrong with her, she's not wasting time, she's not helplessly unstable just a little unsure of the future. Rosalie who covers her with blankets and scarves and cloaks.

_You, come crashing into my life._

_It…makes me happy. I suppose_ _ **you**_ _make me happy._

_I care for you. Sometimes too much._

Tears spring to her eyes. The sob that leaps from her startles them both. Peter gives her a worried glance.

She reaches out and touches his arm. "I'm so sorry, Peter, but can you please turn around."

.

Charlotte gives them a confused wave as Rosvar Transport 2.0 rolls back into town. Her bafflement rises in intensity when they don't stop at the edge of the village and bounce along the forgotten road to Castle Rosvar.

.

As she runs up the path from the gate where Peter dropped her, she has a million and one thoughts buzzing in her brain. What's she going to say? What if Rose isn't there? What if she was wrong and Rose doesn't want to see her? What if the castle's empty? Why didn't she put on lipgloss in the car?

She's about halfway up the hill when a shape in the lake catches in the corner of her vision. _Of all the places_. Jess curses and tears across the grass to the shore. As she gets closer, she sees the deep blue fabric of her dress, Rosalie, facedown in the water. Floating like a dead man.

"Rosalie! What the hell are you doing?" Jess shouts. Fear rushes through her when she doesn't move. "Oh god." Jess rips her coat off and runs into the freezing water, shrieking at the temperature shock as it stabs into her like a million little knives. She loses the bottom quickly and flails wildly to keep herself afloat. "Rose!"

Rosalie lifts her head from the water. Perfectly _alive_ , it turns out. "What are _you_ doing? I can't die!"

"What?" Jess yells over her own thrashing in the water. "You're so dramatic!"

Rosalie grabs her by the shirt collar, eyes searing all the way down Jess' nerve endings. "I cannot die, and yet you _kill me_."

"Then _haunt_ me!" Jess shouts in her face. "Don't push me away! We can make this wor-"

Rosalie's lips crush against hers, and the world drops dead.

Her arms stop thrashing around and settle on the vampire's shoulders. With Rosalie around her, they sink quickly, hair floating gracefully around them, sun filtering through the depths swallowing them. For a moment, Jess doesn't care if they ever resurface.

It isn't until her lungs press that a bead of panic leaks inside. Her stomach flips as the world blurs around everything but Rosalie. In an instant, they're out of the water, dripping on the muddy shore. The sleeves of Rose's dress have slipped from her shoulders. Droplets of water slide down her smooth skin as it glitters in the weak sunlight. And the vampire's eyes are _so dark_ , it sends a bolt of desire straight through her.

"I'm immortal," Rosalie says seriously.

"Yeah, I know," Jess says, pulling her back down. Her lips are so soft, Jess thinks she _must_ have drowned a few seconds ago and this is the big promise of the afterlife, but Rose's teeth are a sharp reminder of life as they sink into her bottom lip. Heat blazes insistently beneath her skin, rising from the pit in her stomach and threatening to burn her alive at the gentle caress of her tongue. The wind stings against her wet skin, so cold it only adds to the fire rippling through her.

Rosalie breaks the kiss again. And in another flash of movement, they're back inside the castle, Jess' fingers grasping at the back of her neck. Rose's hands find her hips as she backs Jess against the heavy door, her grip tightening at the soft sound Jess makes as her shoulders press against the wood. "I am a vampire."

"Okay," Jess says breathlessly. "Whatever."

"I drink-"

"Blood. Trust me, _I know_. Please," Jess says, catching her eyes. She strokes the line of her jaw with her thumb. "Just kiss me."

Rose lets out one last breath and smiles.

.

Jess' fantasy montage gets cut short when she starts shivering so badly she can't even stand up straight. Rosalie looks at her like she's dying in her arms before it finally clicks that it's nearly winter and they just came out of the country's coldest lake.

"This is not how I p-pictured this happening," Jess says through her chattering teeth as Rosalie peels her soaking wet t-shirt off of her. "And I've pictured this a lot."

"Very funny," Rose mutters as she blurs away to hang up their clothes.

They're by the fire now, sitting on a quilt and trying to unthaw. Rosalie drapes a flimsy silky _something_ over her shoulders. It's a robe. Probably more suited to Blanche DuBois than Jess Stanley, and clearly Rose has forgotten what kinds of fabrics are warm and which are just for looks. However, Rose comes back into view in a thin pink robe of her own and suddenly Jess doesn't feel so cold anymore.

Jess reaches for her, eager to pick up where almost-hypothermia so rudely interrupted them, but the vampire holds her hand up with a stern look. "Your lips are blue," Rose says. "I'll only make it worse."

"Well, what if I asked _really_ nicely?"

Rose rolls her eyes magnificently. Jess wonders how she manages it. "Fine, but you'll never get warm."

"I don't care," Jess says as she snuggles into her side. With the fire nearly scorching her back, the ice of Rose isn't so bad. It's not a lingering cold, and it seems to fade with contact. Jess splays her hand over her collarbone and brushes aside her damp hair. The long column of her neck is so perfect, it gets her thinking.

"Where did he bite you?"

Rosalie holds up her arm and pulls back the silk sleeve of her robe so Jess can see the jagged circle of old scar tissue on the inside of her elbow- the only imperfection on her entire body it seems.

Jess traces around it with the tip of her finger. "Where would you do it?"

Rosalie sighs. "I would prefer somewhere only _I_ would know, but the neck is popular. Wrists." She lifts one of Jess' hands and slowly lowers her lips to the delicate skin of her inner arm. "I don't know why you're asking. I won't do it."

"Ever?"

"Never," Rosalie says brightly despite the finality of her words. Jess feels her heart sink, but Rosalie doesn't give her the time to wallow in it. The press of her cool lips against the corner of her jaw electrocutes her disappointment into ash.

"Aw, I wanted to be sparkly. And super hot."

"You are very attractive," Rosalie says, her voice against her ear and low enough to rumble through them both. "I don't think I've ever wanted anything more."

"Am I supposed to believe that?" Jess says, a betraying shake in her voice.

"I'm not a liar."

"Then what are you?"

"Yours, even in death."

.

Jess arranges for a later flight, and Rosalie drives her to the airport in a different but equally as shiny car as the one they took to Guid. Despite the looming goodbye, Jess feels somewhat hopeful. Or at the very least, ready to pick up the remaining pieces of her life in Chicago and form them into something better this time.

Rosalie has been quiet, content to hold her hand and carry her luggage until checking. There are more people here than Jess has seen in weeks. She can only imagine how Rosalie feels in this place.

"You okay?" Jess asks as they weave through the crowded terminal.

"Last night... I should have chased after you. I-"

She stops when Jess shakes her head. "It's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're allowed to be scared."

"But I hurt you."

"I think you hurt yourself more, Rose... I think you do that a lot."

Rosalie leans in close when she speaks. "In the water, I realized…the fact that I met you at all means I'm moving forward with my life. I am capable, and so are you."

"We're going to be fine," Jess agrees. Security is just ahead. The atmosphere around airports is permanently mangled by the intrusion of goodbye. Way up there with the nitrogen. You could probably see it from space.

Jess takes her carry-on backpack from Rosalie's arm. She looks so lost in here without it, so beautiful and overdressed as always. She doesn't look human, she never has.

"Don't be sad," Jess says. She pulls her rainbow scarf off and winds it around Rosalie's neck, nearly squeaking with delight at the surprise in her muted gold eyes. She pulls her skyscraping vampire down by the colorful fringed ends and kisses her.

Rosalie's cool fingertips brush across her cheek. When they pull apart, Rose presses their foreheads together briefly before stepping away to let her go. "I will miss you."

"I'll be back, you know. You can't get rid of me," Jess says as she turns for security. She makes it about two steps before she stops and looks over her shoulder with a smile. "Not that you'd ever want to."

"No," Rosalie says earnestly if not a little disguised in fake derision. She's still Rose after all. "Never."


	11. You'll Find Her Eventually

They've figured it out. Sort of.

The whole long-distance thing is hard like they knew it would be. It's a lot of long FaceTime calls (which Rosalie finally figured out after the tireless efforts of Maggie) and the kind of longing that fogs windows.

Deciding to stay in Chicago is a decision that Jess quickly comes to regret. But even California seems less shiny these days. She lasts about eight months before looking into production companies in Scotland. It takes a while, but with the help of Eric Yorkie and an old professor, Jess manages to get hired by a small production company based in Edinburgh. She does mostly sound design and editorial theatrical marketing which isn't so glamorous but it's exactly what she went to school for, and she loves it.

Rosalie buys her a house in Stockbridge. It's certainly too much, but arguing with the woman is useless- as she has well learned. Technically, it's for both of them, and slowly (like _glacially_ ) Rose is spending more and more time with her before retreating back to Rosvar. Jess can't complain. The castle's a great place to spend her weekends, and she gets to see Charlotte, Peter, Laurent, and even James and Victoria have come around (they never did get back together).

Maggie comes to Rosvar for a week every few months. Sometimes Siobhan and Liam come with her, but mostly it's just Maggie- ruffling Rose's feathers for the fun of it. Maybe Jess enables her a little bit when she introduces the girl to Victoria, giving her a whole new set of ways to torture Rosalie. Out of love of course. Always out of love.

Rosalie throws her pink rubber boots into the lake as revenge. Fair is fair.

.

It takes three years for Rosalie to finally say yes when Jess proposes, and Jess proposes a lot. She can't help it. She just looks very wifeable when she's blowing out candles or drawing or leaning over the engine of a car.

On the big day, they only invite a handful of people. Jess' parents, Angela, their friends in Rosvar, Edinburgh, and Guid. It's small, but they mean it with everything they have.

Years and years of princess dresses. How was Jess supposed to know that when she walked down the aisle, Rose would be waiting in a white suit?

.

The years sail forward. By thirty, she isn't dictator of the world, but she is happy in every way she thought possible. She has good friends, human and otherwise, and she's thinking about starting her own little post company to see what's out there. Rose's junior orchestra (she couldn't help but take over) is performing with the symphony in Guid in a few days. She never looks more heavenly than she does with her harp, up on that stage. Well, almost never.

It's all wonderful. Honestly, it's nearly perfect.

Then of course, she just has to go and die.

She is on the phone with Rosalie on the winding drive to Rosvar for the holiday. The snow is coming down pretty hard and has been for the past few days. It's icy. She's careful, barely crawling along. Rosalie made sure her little car was winter-proofed within an inch of its life before she even considered letting her make the drive.

"Shibh got here early," Rose huffs, probably well within hearing range of the other vampire. "She always does this! The castle was filthy. Even I can't keep up with the dust sometimes."

"I'm sure she didn't even notice," Jess tries.

"No, she told me so." Rose grumbles something too quiet to hear before she bounces right back. "Are you getting close?"

"Yeah. Thirty, maybe forty minutes. I should get off the phone."

"Okay. Go slow. I love you."

"I love you, too." She hangs up and sits in the silence for a moment before switching the radio back on. It's so lonely out here without Rose's voice.

Ahead, she sees headlights for the first time in about an hour. She gets way over, just in case, but it doesn't even make a difference. Maybe a deer jumped out in the road, or they fell asleep, or a patch of black ice sent them flying. It doesn't matter, really. It's all just blackness anyway.

.

She wakes to the sound of metal screeching through the ringing in her ears. Through bleary eyes, she sees the door ripped from its frame. She feels the seatbelt cutting into her neck. How did she end up sideways?

"Rose," she says, almost giddy in her disorientation. Her head feels like it might explode with the way it's thundering. "You're so dramatic. I love you."

But it isn't Rosalie in the darkness. The eyes piercing through her delirium of head injury and blood loss are not gold. But _red_.

Adrenaline crashes through her like a torrent of water as a pale, angular face framed with wild black hair comes into the weak moonlight.

"You," Jess whispers, vision blacking out around the edges as her consciousness loses its grip. "But you're dead."

...

...

Rosalie collapses into her writing desk as she stands, her entire body seizing at the blood in the air. The wood splinters and cracks from the force of her steadying grip.

Across the room, the magazine falls from Siobhan's hands into her lap. They lock eyes only long enough to confirm the nightmare scorching down her throat and leadening her stomach. Just moments before, they had been talking about taking Jessica sailing in the summer, spending the season beneath the stars, outside.

There is no outside.

"Ro-"

"No!" Rose shouts as she tears out of the library and sprints for the stairs.

Blood. Not enough of it. The pulse she knows so well, dying as it approaches.

The heavy castle doors fly open at her hands, and a flurry of snow rushes inside with the blistering gust of wind. And not ten feet away, Jessica is leaning feebly against the stone wall, covered in blood, shaking like a leaf.

"Rose," she says weakly. She reaches a hand out, dripping blood on the cold stone. "Help me."

...

...

"No, no, no," Rose says over and over again as she carries her inside. Jess kind of wonders what she's going on about, but it's a little hard to focus at the moment. Mostly, she wonders how she got here. She still had a long way when she was on the phone with Rose, and now...

Rose lifts her head gently. Not even the dizziness of blood loss can mask the horror on her face when she sees the deep gash in her skull.

"What happened to-" Jess winces and pushes Rose's hand back. "I'm okay."

"No, you're not," Rose says frantically. She pulls aside Jess' coat and sobs at the red bleeding steadily from her stomach.

Jess coughs. Behind her eyes she sees the glow of red against the night sky, the raven hair that shone silver in the moonlight, the low voice muttering to her as she fell in and out of consciousness. Jess had recognized her instantly. Her mind feels as fuzzy and white as the storm outside, but she fights with all she has to grab Rose's arm. "Renata."

The horror in Rosalie's eyes only seems to deepen. "Siobhan," she calls, a desperate edge in her voice.

The other vampire is by her side in an instant. "There's a trail. I've got it." She turns for the door but hesitates and finds Jess' fading gaze. But when she speaks, it's to Rose. "She's lost too much blood. You have to decide. Now." And then she's gone.

Rosalie makes an anguished noise and lowers her head against Jess' chest.

"Even in death," Jess says, her mouth moving in slow motion almost. She tries to rest her hand on the back of Rose's head, but it won't cooperate. She can barely feel it anymore.

Rose lifts her head. "What?"

"Isn't that what you said?" Jess says, opening her eyes a little. "You're mine, even in death?"

Rose squeezes her hand and kisses her bruised knuckle. "Yes."

"I'm yours too. I'm not ready to let you go just yet." She coughs again.

"Are you sure?"

Jess manages a nod. At least, it feels like her head is moving. It's kind of hard to tell now, just like it's hard to differentiate between the cold of the room and the cold of the blood leaving her body. Totally not fair by the way. She was driving so _slow_.

Rose gently tilts her head with her hands to expose her neck. With a monumental effort, Jess lifts her hand to stop her. "Only where you can see, remember?"

Her wife's eyes shine with venom, the closest she gets to tears. She nods and Jess feels a stab of pain at the turning of this night into another trauma in Rose's long life. She silently vows to make this right as soon as she's able.

"I remember," Rosalie whispers.

...

...

Siobhan comes back hours later, dark hair full of snowflakes and mud all over the rest of her.

Rosalie is sitting at the edge of the bed, lingering at Jessica's side as the venom burns through her. There's nothing she can do about her pain, and it's killing her to watch the woman she loves suffer even more tonight.

Shibh knocks on the open door, and Rose hisses.

"I lost her," she says gruffly. Her fists are balled at her sides, and Rose can feel her frustration all the way across the room. "I chased her halfway to Edinburgh before she stopped and threatened half the city unless I stopped. She's gone, Rose."

"I don't care."

"I know you don't mean that."

Rose looks up. All at once, she feels her anger and fear and old sadness she has served for centuries meld into one brittle melancholy. Something to be left behind. "But I do."

...

...

Red-eyed and three days later, Jessica Stanley wakes up for the very last time.

She sits up and gasps, hand flying to her neck that's burning out of her body. She claws at the sheets over her legs, oblivious to the way they tear like wet tissue paper. Her throat is so hot she sticks her head between her knees and screams.

"It's okay," a soft voice says, cooling her a little around the edges. She feels hands on her shoulders, cool but not as icy as they used to be. She lifts her head from her knees and opens her eyes. Rose smiles faintly and runs her hands up and down Jess' upper arms and shoulders. "You're okay."

At the sight of her, all Jess can think about is the softness of her lips and the way she always shivers when Jess kisses the line of her neck where her pulse used to be. And all it takes is the mere thought for her body to act on its own and surge the gap between them. She knocks into Rose like rocks in a landslide. Thin cracks spread across Rose's shoulders at the contact.

"Oh shit," Jess says, balking. "I'm so sorry!"

"You are...very strong right now," Rose says in a strained voice, but she returns the hug with a fervor Jess has never felt from her before. Excitement spikes through her at the thought- neither one of them has to hold back anymore. "How do you feel?"

"Okay, I think." Jess tries to clear her throat, but it doesn't help at all. If anything it sends a heatwave scorching through her. "Uh, Rose."

"Yes?"

" _How_ did you not eat me?"

Rose shrugs. "I honestly haven't the slightest idea."

Jess gives her shoulder a playful shove that turns out to almost knock her over. That will definitely take some getting used to. That and the fact that she can smell the smoke from the candle that just went out in the foyer several floors below. She can _hear_ the heavy snowflakes falling in the ice-crusted edges of the shores of the lake outside. The deer to the west, a small herd from the sound of it. The bustle of the village below...

When her senses finally allow, she returns her gaze to her wife who has been curiously watching this whole time. But there's a flicker of sadness in her golden eyes that pulls at Jess' heart far more than the rustling of the outside world and the quiet thrum of candles burning.

"I...never wanted this for you."

"I know, Rose." Jess reaches out and smoothes some of her golden hair behind her ear.

"But- You were dying in my arms and I just- I-" She turns her head, but Jess catches her chin and holds her. "I couldn't let you go. I love you more than I hate what I am."

"You were never a monster," Jess says softly. She leans in, taking care to be gentle, and kisses her. "I wanted this. I wanted _you._ Any way I could have you."

"I'm glad." Rose smiles, eyes a little misty. "I'm so tired of chasing ghosts."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end! I've been trying to get better at longer stories, so if you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. Thank you for reading!


End file.
